I had said no, but the thought lingered; this was Justice Scalia’s seat, a man I’d revered for my entire adult life. To even imagine occupying his chambers and trying to continue his legacy was breathtaking.
For the next couple of weeks, I continued to think about it, and I wrestled with it and prayed about it. Most of my close friends and family thought I was nuts for saying no to the Court. Heidi understood, and so did my parents, but just about everyone else said, “Are you sure?” The next weekend, I invited my pastor to come over to our house to pray with me about the choice. He had an interesting perspective. He said, “I understand your choice. For me, I imagine if someone offered me the chance to become one of the leading theologians in the world, which could have a profound impact on millions for decades to come. If doing so meant that I had to give up being a pastor, no longer be a shepherd to our congregation, I would pass on the opportunity because it’s not my calling.”
The more I considered it, the more certain I became in the choice. And, I knew I had to make the decision irrespective of any future run for the presidency. I’ve run once, and we came incredibly close to winning, and it’s no secret that I hope to run again in the future. But the only right way to make this decision and not second-guess myself for the rest of my life was to assume that a viable path to the presidency would never materialize, that the last meaningful public position I would ever hold would be where I am right now, in the Senate.
I came to the conclusion that I could add greater comparative value in the Senate. There are a number of good, principled people who very much want to be judges and who would stay faithful to the Constitution. There are depressingly few principled leaders in electoral politics. It’s a brutal, ugly game. You have to raise money constantly, and you get demonized on a daily basis. Most people with any sense say forget it and choose to do something else. Stop and think, in fight after fight—the public policy battles that really matter—who consistently steps forward and leads when it’s hard? Because we desperately need political leaders who will charge into battle, who will make the public case for liberty, who will work to move people’s hearts and minds to embrace our constitutional freedoms.
That’s why I spent 2017 doing three CNN town-hall debates with Bernie Sanders on Obamacare and on taxes. Those debates were among the highest rated programs on CNN the entire year. And that’s also why I launched a podcast (Verdict with Ted Cruz) during impeachment that at the time became the number one–ranked podcast in the world. That podcast continues every week, and to date, we’ve gotten over 15 million downloads.
Reagan inspired a generation of young conservatives dedicated to Liberty, and I want to do all I can to do the same. For decades on the other side of the aisle, in the Senate, Ted Kennedy mentored and launched hundreds of committed liberals who went on to have an extraordinary (and unfortunately harmful) impact on our nation; I resolved to do precisely the opposite, and I’ve worked hard to mentor scores of young conservatives and libertarians, who in turn have gone on to serve in Congress, as Texas solicitor general, as journalists, as federal judges and U.S. attorneys, and in dozens of senior roles throughout the Trump administration.
And so I came to a real peace with saying no to the Court. Perhaps at a different phase in life I might think differently, but the Court is not where I personally believed I could make the biggest difference.
The question was briefly revisited in June of 2020. While vacationing with my family near my in-laws’ home in California, I received a call on my cellphone from President Trump. While I stood in flip-flops and my girls water skied on a pristine lake behind me, Trump told me he was expanding his list of potential Supreme Court nominees and asked if he could include me on the new list. I told him, “If it’s helpful, sure, you can add me to the list. But I don’t want the job, and I wouldn’t take it.” Unlike our conversation four years earlier, this time I didn’t hesitate.
Two weeks into his presidency, on January 31, 2017, President Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch—one of the twenty-one judges on the list—to fill Justice Scalia’s seat. Democrats fought passionately against his confirmation, going so far as to launch the only partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee in our nation’s history. I helped lead the fight to confirm him, making the case both on the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor, where we ultimately had to change the rules to overcome the Democratic blockade. The Senate confirmed Justice Gorsuch, 54–45.
Why was the two-year battle to fill Scalia’s vacancy so hard-fought? Because today, the Supreme Court has become the preeminent arbiter of our constitutional rights. And the type of justice who serves has a profound impact on public policy and our fundamental liberties.
This would have surprised the Framers of our Constitution. In Federalist No. 78, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton famously described the judicial branch as the “least dangerous” of the three branches of the federal government because it “may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment.” That is true—in theory, at least. But history has not always borne out Hamilton’s prognostication.
Starting in the 1960s, America saw the rise of activist judges. Under our constitutional system, judges are not supposed to decide policy matters. They are not supposed to make decisions based on their own political preferences. Instead, contested questions of public policy are meant to be left to the elected branches of government so that the voters
