All You Need to Know About Neil Gorsuch

An essential feature on All You Need to Know About Neil Gorsuch, including key takeaways.

After finishing his clerkships, Gorsuch decided to join Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, a boutique legal firm. From 1995 to 1997, he worked as an associate in Washington, D.C., and then as a partner from 1998 until 2005. During this time, he attended Oxford University, where he earned a Doctor of Philosophy in legal philosophy in 2004.

Gorsuch joined the US Department of Justice in June 2005 as the Principal Deputy to Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum. He held this position until July 2006. He was in charge of all litigation arising from the War on Terror while in this position. He also assisted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in preparing for hearings following the public disclosure of NSA warrantless monitoring.

President George W. Bush nominated Gorsuch to the seat of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in May 2006. In July 2006, he was confirmed by a unanimous voice vote in the United States Senate. Gorsuch argued for a broad understanding of religious freedom during his decade-long service on the Tenth Circuit.

He has also argued against the dormant Commerce Clause, which allows state legislation to be found unconstitutional if it imposes an undue burden on interstate commerce. He also supports the death penalty and wants a stringent interpretation of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. He wrote his first Tenth Circuit ruling in 2008 and his last in 2016. He wrote 212 published opinions for the Tenth Circuit.

During the 2016 presidential election in the United States, candidate Donald Trump named Gorsuch as one of 21 justices he would consider nominating to the Supreme Court if elected. After Trump took office in January 2017, Gorsuch was regarded as one of the leading candidates for the vacant Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. By the end of the month, Trump had announced Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. He was 49 years old at the time, making him the Supreme Court’s youngest candidate since Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time. His nomination was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote in April. A few days later, the Senate confirmed his nomination to the Supreme Court by a vote of 54-45, with three Democrats joining the entire Senate Republican delegation in voting to confirm him.

Gorsuch made his first unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in “Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc.” Since then, he has authored the majority opinion in landmark cases such as “Bostock v. Clayton County” on LGBT rights, “McGirt v. Oklahoma” on Native American law, “Kennedy v. Bremerton School District” on personal religious observance, “303 Creative LLC v. Elenis” on free speech, and “Ramos v. Louisiana” on jury verdicts.

Gorsuch supports originalism, which holds that the Constitution should be construed as it was meant at the time it was enacted. He is also a supporter of textualism, which holds that statutes should be construed literally without regard for legislative history or the law’s underlying purpose or meaning.