Americans 'Getting Whacked' by Too Many Laws: Gorsuch

Ordinary Americans are "getting whacked" by too many laws and regulations, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch says in a new book that underscores his skepticism of federal agencies and the power they wield. "Too little law and we're not safe, and our liberties aren't protected," Gorsuch told the AP. "But too much law and you actually impair those same things." Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law is being published Tuesday by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Gorsuch received a $500,000 advance, according to his annual financial disclosure reports. More from the interview and the book:

• Judicial independence: "I'm not saying that there aren't ways to improve what we have. I'm simply saying that we've been given something very special. It's the envy of the world, the United States judiciary."
• Presidential immunity: Gorsuch defended the immunity ruling as necessary to prevent presidents from being hampered while in office by threats of prosecution once they leave. "Here we have, for the first time in our history, one presidential administration bringing criminal charges against a prior president. It's a grave question, right? Grave implications."
• The book: Co-authored by a former law clerk, Janie Nitze, Gorsuch's tome largely sets those big issues aside and focuses on everyday Americans who risked jail time, large fines, deportation, and other hardships over unyielding rules. "There were just so many cases that came to me in which I saw ordinary Americans, just everyday, regular people trying to go about their lives, not trying to hurt anybody or do anything wrong and just getting whacked, unexpectedly, by some legal rule they didn't know about," says Gorsuch.
• One vignette: It involves John Yates, a Florida fisherman who was convicted of getting rid of undersized grouper under a federal law originally aimed at the accounting industry and the destruction of evidence in the Enron scandal. Yates' case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where he won by a single vote. "I wanted to tell the story of people whose lives were affected," Gorsuch says.

(More Neil Gorsuch stories.)