Gorsuch fulfills his billing as a conservative presence
In his first year, justice has staked out position as ‘committed originalist’
WASHINGTON – Neil Gorsuch had been a member of the Supreme Court for exactly 11 weeks when he made clear in a single day what type of justice he would be.
On the last day of the 2016-17 term – as the court addressed gay rights, government power, gun ownership and government takings – Gorsuch was a part of dissent after dissent, announcing to the legal world that he would not go along to get along.
In the nine months since that declaration of independence, Gorsuch has not retreated from his core beliefs that the court should favor the words contained in the Constitution and federal laws over the supposed expertise of the federal bureaucracy.
“Tonight, I can report that a person can be both a publicly committed originalist and textualist and be confirmed to the Supreme Court,” he told a Federalist Society audience in November.
It helps to have a vacancy – in this case, one created by the unexpected death in 2016 of the high court’s conservative leader, Antonin Scalia, who brought adherence to the Constitution and legal texts into the mainstream.
Gorsuch brought impeccable credentials as a Denver-based judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He had degrees from Columbia, Harvard Law and Oxford and a stint at the Department of Justice. His mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, had been in President Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet.
Liberals saw his loud entrance differently, decrying his legal philosophy, his behavior on the bench and his writing style. Ian Millhiser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, warned early on that “Gorsuch will make liberals miss Scalia.”
Gorsuch has teamed up with Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s most conservative member, in several dissents. But when the court refused to hear a challenge to California’s 10-day waiting period for gun purchases, Gorsuch surprised some conservatives by not joining Thomas’ lone dissent. The decision came just days after a gunman killed 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
“So far he’s staked out extremely conservative positions,” said Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice. “He is as ultra-conservative as we predicted he would be.”
Gorsuch’s efforts, however, may be driven more by judicial philosophy than ideology.
“Lots of people were painting him as some sort of monster,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel at the Judicial Crisis Network, which spearheaded the effort to get Gorsuch confirmed last year. “There hasn’t been a dramatic shift on the court, and that shouldn’t be surprising.”