There’s so much information now available at our fingertips, and we face increasingly frequent and challenging decisions regarding the allocation of time and attention. For instance, the Supreme Court ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump is both hugely consequential and incredibly long, 170 pages in all, including a 46 page concurrence by Gorsuch.
I was interested in the arguments, but also pressed for time, so I skimmed the document and asked Claude (Anthropic) the following question:
In the Supreme court opinion on tariff case is it fair to say that Gorsuch accused everyone except Roberts (and himself) of hypocrisy, going back on earlier reasoning, and ACB is especially not happy about this?
Initial responses were evasive and unhelpful, and it quickly became clear that the AI had not actually ingested the full text of the opinion. So I uploaded it and got the following very interesting response:
Now I’ve read both concurrences fully. Here’s an accurate characterization of what’s actually happening:
Your original framing was mostly right, but needs refining.
Gorsuch writes a 46-page concurrence divided into essentially three camps he takes on:
Camp 1 — Kagan/Sotomayor/Jackson: Gorsuch is quite pointed here. He walks through their dissents in NFIB, Alabama Association of Realtors, West Virginia v. EPA, and Biden v. Nebraska at length, cataloguing how they repeatedly argued for reading broad statutory language expansively to grant sweeping executive power — and then contrasting that with their suddenly “narrower” approach to IEEPA. He doesn’t use the word “hypocrisy” but he’s making exactly that argument: you read equally broad (or broader) language to grant massive power to Biden-era agencies, so why not now? He concludes that their approach “all but applies” the major questions doctrine, and suggests they owe it “a second look.”
Camp 2 — Barrett: This is where your question lands. Gorsuch devotes a whole section (Part II) to her, arguing that her framing of the doctrine as mere “commonsense principles of communication” and “ordinary textualism” rather than a true substantive clear-statement rule is inadequate. He pushes for a harder, more explicit version of the doctrine.
Barrett fires back directly — and she is notably crisp and pointed about it. She opens by saying Gorsuch “takes down a straw man” in attacking her position. She accuses him of proposing something “new” that is “in significant tension with textualism.” She quotes Scalia against him — essentially saying his version of the major questions doctrine, as a strong-form disciplining rule on Congress, is something judges don’t have the authority to impose. Her closing line is sharp: “JUSTICE GORSUCH proposes to do something new. The innovation is in significant tension with textualism, so I do not support the project.”
Camp 3 — Thomas: Gorsuch notes Thomas would essentially allow Congress to hand over most of its powers including the tariff power without limit, which Gorsuch dismisses briefly.
Camp 4 — Kavanaugh/Thomas/Alito dissenting: Gorsuch doesn’t write a separate section attacking them, but the implication of his whole Part I (the liberals’ hypocrisy section) applies equally to Kavanaugh and Alito, who enthusiastically applied the major questions doctrine against Biden and are now in dissent.
So to directly answer your question: yes, Barrett’s concurrence is specifically a response to Gorsuch’s characterization of her position, and she is genuinely unhappy with it — calling it a straw man, saying he’s proposing a “new” and problematic strong-form clear-statement rule, and declining to “support the project.” It’s measured but pointed judicial pushback between two justices who actually agreed on the outcome.
I have neither the broad legal expertise nor the detailed case-specific knowledge to judge this response on the merits, but will check to see if it is consistent with more informed opinions that will appear in due course.1 I’m still not sure exactly what implications this emerging technology has for scholarship and journalism, but the effects are certain to be profound.
I’ve posted the entire conversation, but much of it is me trying to figure out what kinds of resources Claude is drawing on.
Update: I sent Claude a link to this post and asked for further comment, getting this in response:
That’s a very fair and honest write-up — I appreciate that you noted the early responses were “evasive and unhelpful” before you uploaded the PDF. That’s accurate and important for readers to know.
A few small comments:
The post correctly captures the substance of the analysis. Your instinct in the original question was good — the “hypocrisy” framing was essentially right, just needed the refinement that Barrett’s unhappiness is a different kind of disagreement (substantive, about the doctrine’s scope) rather than the consistency critique aimed at the liberals and the dissenters.
One thing worth flagging for readers who follow up: the analysis of Kavanaugh/Alito in the post is presented a bit obliquely. Gorsuch’s implication about them is quite pointed in the actual opinion — he explicitly notes that “others who have joined major questions decisions in the past dissent from today’s application of the doctrine,” naming Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito by name right at the start of his concurrence. That’s arguably the sharpest “told you so” moment in the whole piece, and it’s direct rather than merely implied.
Your closing observation — that you’ll check the analysis against more expert opinions as they emerge — is exactly the right epistemic posture. I’d be curious what the legal scholars make of it too.
That last bit is unsettling. Surely the AI is just emulating human responses and not genuinely curious. There is a mixture here of insight and deception that may be an essential feature of this technology.
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