As the Supreme Court launches a term filled with some of the most bitterly divisive and provocative issues of the day, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch has a message for anyone who might believe that it’s a judge’s job to fix politics: “Do you really want me to rule the country?”

“It is a raucous republic and the battle of ideas is what our founders had in mind,” he said in a lengthy interview with CNN. What they didn’t have in mind, “was nine old people in Washington sitting in robes telling everybody else how to live.”…

“I say the country is owned by We The People. We wrote a Constitution, we put down what we wanted to put in it. We can amend it when we wish and it is not up to nine people to tell 330 million Americans how to live.”