Great choice! Learned and a true conservative in the mode of Scalia.
Via Politico:
Judge Neil Gorsuch, 49, is on President Donald Trump’s short list for appointment to the Supreme Court to fill the seat vacated a year ago by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Gorsuch has the typical pedigree of a high court justice. He graduated from Columbia, Harvard and Oxford, clerked for two Supreme Court justices and did a stint at the Department of Justice.
He attended Harvard Law with former President Barack Obama. On Tuesday, Obama’s former ethics czar, Norm Eisen, another classmate, tweeted: “Hearing rumors Trump’s likely Supreme Court pick is Neil Gorsuch, my (and President Obama’s!) 1991 Harvard Law classmate.If so, a great guy!”
He Is A Friend Of Justice Scalia’s & A Traditionalist As Well
He Once Clerked For Justice Kennedy
Via Washington Post:
At Neil Gorsuch’s 2006 investiture ceremony in Denver, his former law partner wanted to retire any suggestion that Gorsuch had dyed his hair gray to conceal the fact that at 39 he had become one of the country’s youngest federal appeals court judges.
“When Neil came to our firm in 1995, he had gray hair,” said the law partner, Mark C. Hansen. “In fact, he was born with silver hair, as well as an inexhaustible store of Winston Churchill quotes.”
Indeed, Gorsuch, now 49, seems naturally equipped for his spot on President Trump’s shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees.
There is a family connection to Republican establishment politics and service in the administration of George W. Bush. There is a glittery Ivy League résumé — Columbia undergrad, Harvard Law — along with a Marshall scholarship to Oxford. There is a partnership at one of Washington’s top litigation law firms and a string of successful cases.
There is a Supreme Court clerkship; Gorsuch was hired by Justice Byron White, a fellow Colorado native, who shared him with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.