Boulder’s Neil Gorsuch candidate for Supreme Court vacancy?

Jan. 31--The shoulder of rural and scenic Lookout Road was lined Monday afternoon with news vans and national reporters hoping for a glimpse of a man on the speculated short list of those President Donald Trump may nominate for the Supreme Court vacancy.

Neil Gorsuch, the man they were waiting to see but never did, is a conservative jurist in the intellectual mold of the late Antonin Scalia, and he hails from deep-blue Boulder, of all places.

Along with William Pryor, of Alabama, and Thomas Hardiman, of Pennsylvania, Gorsuch, 49, is considered as good a bet as anyone to be Trump's choice. The president announced on Twitter that he'll reveal his nominee Tuesday at 6 p.m. Mountain time.

Under normal circumstances, Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge in Denver and adjunct law professor at the University of Colorado, would seem a winning pick for Trump.

He is widely respected among his disproportionately liberal peers, colleagues and students in Boulder, who describe him as brilliant, thoughtful and charming.

Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett, a Democrat, called Gorsuch "very ethical" and "very smart."

"I found him to be a person of character and quality, intellectually curious and willing to debate all sides," offered Jordan Henry, a CU Law student and staunch liberal. "I think he's dedicated to the truth, to justice, to the justice system.

"I may not always agree with him but I do think he gives all voices a fair hearing, and that's all you can ask of a judge."

Originalism and textualism

In Gorsuch, there is plenty for liberals to disagree with and plenty for conservatives to love.

Like Scalia, he's a student of originalism and textualism -- ideas that center on literal interpretation of the Constitution and insist the document should not evolve based on societal shifts over time.

He opposes assisted suicide, which Colorado legalized last year, and his comments on that issue -- "all human beings are intrinsically valuable" -- suggest opposition to abortion, though he has never ruled on that issue.

He sided with Hobby Lobby in a high-profile 2014 case surrounding the company's rejection of an Affordable Care Act provision that required employees be covered for contraceptives.

Of course, these aren't normal circumstances. If Gorsuch is nominated, he may never be confirmed.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told POLITICO on Monday that he plans to filibuster any nominee who isn't Merrick Garland -- former President Barack Obama's nominee who Senate Republicans refused to give a hearing to -- and several other Democrats have also indicated Trump will have trouble getting whichever judge he taps to the 60-vote Senate majority that person will need.

Garland, like Gorsuch, also has bipartisan respect, but has so far been blocked by Republicans who insisted on waiting until Obama's term ended before hearing a Supreme Court nominee. Merkley said it would be a "stolen seat" if Trump's nominee is confirmed.

And if Gorsuch is the pick, he may be judged by many not for his unique qualities, but for his association with a controversial new president who in little more than a week on the job has inspired millions of protesters to rally against him in cities and airports around the world.

Attorney Mark Hansen was Gorsuch's first boss, at the Washington, D.C., firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans and Figel, and he believes his onetime colleague and still friend is well equipped to handle the storm any Trump nominee will invariably encounter.

"I think if anybody could be ready for it, it'd be someone like Neil, who's very down-to-earth and intelligent and not a brittle sort of guy," Hansen said.

That last quality is something Scalia did not always display. Gorsuch is similarly charismatic, but not quite so abrasive. One student described him as a "1950s game-show host."

"I have nothing but the utmost confidence in his ability to handle attention put on him," said Savannah Schaefer, a CU Law graduate. "He's a phenomenal guy and just brilliant. I think he'd be a gift, in some ways, if we got him nominated."

Schaefer grew up with a Democrat mom and Republican dad, and said, "I think they'd both respect the heck out of him."

Added Hansen: "He acts and relates well to all people, and he did the same sort of thing in trial, where he was very good at making connections with jurors. He's a regular person. It's part of being a westerner."

Gorsuch is a westerner in many other ways, too.

Though he holds degrees from Columbia, Harvard and Oxford, several colleagues commended him on Monday for being unpretentious and accessible -- traits Colorado voters tend to prize.

Those testimonials might also appear in conflict with the fact that Gorsuch lives in a 3,600-square-foot home in unincorporated Boulder County, just west of city limits in a gated subdivision with million-dollar homes and sweeping mountain views.

He, his wife, Louise -- a British woman he met at Oxford -- and their two daughters keep horses, chickens and goats on their 3-acre lot, and Gorsuch is known to spend his free time fly-fishing, hiking and rowing at Boulder Reservoir.

"He tried to get me to hike up some 14,000-foot mountain," Hansen said. "It nearly killed me."

In a recent speech, Gorsuch said he was skiing when he got the call telling him Scalia had died.

Mother's experience

If Gorsuch is chosen to succeed Scalia and actually gets a Senate hearing, he'll do so with the experience of having watched his late mother, Anne Gorsuch, being heard ahead of her confirmation as Ronald Reagan's Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Her nomination for that position was credited in large part to the influence of Joseph Coors, an heir to the Colorado beer fortune, on Reagan.

She was the first woman to hold that job, and her appointment forced a young Gorsuch to move from Colorado to Washington. He attended Georgetown Prep, a private high school for boys in the well-to-do suburb of Bethesda, Md.

His mother -- who along with his father, David Gorsuch, graduated from CU Law in 1964 -- was ultimately confirmed unanimously to her EPA post.

Twenty-five years later, George W. Bush appointed Gorsuch to the appeals court in 2006, and he was confirmed by a swift voice vote.

The path he'll face if Trump nominates him now seems certain to be much bumpier than the confirmation process his mother faced, or those faced by former Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Byron White, both of whom Gorsuch clerked for.

But if the accounts of his students at ultra-liberal CU are to believed, his demeanor and reverence for the law will serve him well on that path -- whether it dead-ends with a filibuster or leads to the kind of long career that can reasonably be expected of a judge not yet 50 years old and with a lifetime appointment.

"He mentored our entire class," said Henry, his former pupil. "And he often encouraged us to learn how to win and lose graciously."

Alex Burness: 303-473-1389, [email protected] or twitter.com/alex_burness

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