Neil Gorsuch seems to have plagiarized a portion of his book. This I believe has raised the stakes of his nomination dramatically. Our entire system of scholarship is at risk — if true — in ways we probably can’t even comprehend right now. Plagiarism is a mortal sin in academia. I have seen undergraduate students automatically failed and put on academic probation for much lesser plagiarism. I have seen graduate students thrown out of programs for much lesser plagiarism. I have seen careers ruined for lesser plagiarism. It is in the syllabus and opening lecture of thousands of professors. It is one thing is a pundit with a book contract plagiarizes. It is ugly but it is mostly background. But if we elevate somebody who is a known plagiarist to the highest court in the land it will throw academia and our system of scholarship into chaos. It will lose all credibility. What will teachers says when students point out that a Supreme Court justice was a known plagiarist and yet they put him on the Supreme Court anyway.
We cannot just throw away every single norm we have.