NEIL GORSUCH
Associate Justice
2017 — Present
Personal Life and Education
Neil Gorsuch was born on August 29, 1967, in Denver, Colorado. He was the oldest of three siblings and is a fourth-generation Coloradan. Both his mother and father were lawyers, and his mother served in the Colorado House of Representatives from 1976 to 1980. In 1981, President Reagan appointed Gorsuch’s mother to serve as the first female administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. After his mother’s appointment, Gorsuch’s family moved to Maryland, where he attended Georgetown Preparatory School two years behind Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In school, Gorsuch participated in debate, forensics, and international relations clubs and served as a U.S. Senate page. Gorsuch graduated in 1985 as student body president.
In 1988, Gorsuch graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science, achieving cum laude honors. He completed his degree in three years by taking a heavier courseload during his undergraduate studies. While at Columbia, Gorsuch contributed to the Columbia Daily Spectator and co-founded The Fed, a satirical student publication. He became known for his active participation in debates and his staunch conservative views, often expressing criticisms of left-wing politics through his written work. Following his university years, Gorsuch briefly worked for a short-lived journal before advocating for The Fed to provide a conservative perspective amidst the liberal campus newspapers. He was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
After graduating from Columbia University, Gorsuch attended Harvard Law School on a Harry S. Truman Scholarship. Gorsuch was highly involved at Harvard, having served as an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and a member of the Lincoln's Inn Society, the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project, and the Harvard Defenders program. In law school, Gorsuch maintained his strong conservative beliefs on a campus “full of ardent liberals". Despite his contrasting political views, he was generally well-liked by students. In 1991, Gorsuch graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor. President Barack Obama was among his classmates.
Career
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Gorsuch served as a law clerk for Judge Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit until 1992. Gorsuch then spent a year as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford. From 1993 — 1994, Gorsuch clerked for Justice White and Justice Kennedy alongside Justice Kavanaugh.
In 1995, Gorsuch started at a small law firm in Washington, D.C where he primarily focused on commercial litigation. Gorsuch became a partner in the firm in 1998 and in 2004, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy in legal philosophy from the University of Oxford.
From 2005 to 2006, Gorsuch served as the Principle Deputy to the Associate Attorney General at the Department of Justice where he assisted with civil rights, antitrust, environmental, and terror-related litigation. On May 10, 2006, President Bush nominated Gorsuch to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and on July 20, he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote.
Nomination to the Court
During 2016 election, Gorsuch was included on President Trump’s list of potential candidates to replace late Justice Scalia. After President Trump won the election, Gorsuch remained on the President’s much shorter list of eight candidates to fill the vacancy on the Court. On January 31, 2017, President Trump announced Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee.
On March 20, Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee began. On April 3, the committee voted 11—9 in favor of his nomination. Senate Democrats attempted to filibuster his confirmation vote, but Republicans invoked the “nuclear option,” which allowed a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee to be broken by a simple majority vote. On April 7, the Senate confirmed Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court by a vote of 54 to 45.
