Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist explores a critique of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Three years before he threatened him while standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the problem with Neil Gorsuch was that his decisions as a federal judge were awful for the average working American.

“When the chips are down, far too often he sides with the powerful few over everyday Americans just trying to get a fair shake,” the powerful Schumer said against Gorsuch’s nomination.

On the first day of those confirmation hearings, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said, “In case after case, you have dismissed or rejected efforts by workers and families to recognize their rights or defend their freedoms.”

Now, Gorsuch’s left-wing critics say his problem is actually the complete opposite. They say he cares too much about the little guy and not enough about the bureaucracy that goes after the little guy.

Yes, really.

The criticism stems from a book Gorsuch recently co-authored with Janie Nitze titled Overruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law.

For a book written by a Supreme Court associate justice and one of his former clerks, it’s extremely accessible. The authors note in their introduction that they did not intend it as a legal treatise or academic dissertation so much as a collection of stories based on original reporting and research about the struggle facing Americans overwhelmed with the deluge of Byzantine laws and regulations coming out of Washington.

The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus was the first to make the criticism in a pedantic but defensible column in August. She claimed she didn’t oppose Gorsuch and Nitze’s philosophy so much as felt they didn’t do enough to defend the perspective of the administrative state bureaucrats zealously enforcing laws, statutes, and regulations. Marcus felt that they should have included more facts that made the case for why the government was going so hard against some of the Americans profiled by Gorsuch and Nitze.