Bush to nominate Gorsuch to Denver appeals court

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 10, 2006 at midnight

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President Bush is expected to nominate attorney and legal scholar Neil Gorsuch to take a seat on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Sen. Wayne Allard announced late Tuesday.

Gorsuch, who has a long paper trail of writings against issues such as euthanasia and judicial activism, currently serves in the U.S. Department of Justice as a principal deputy to the associate attorney general.

A Denver native, he comes from a family of well-known Colorado conservatives, including his late mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, who was former President Reagan's Environmental Protection Agency director until she resigned in 1983 amid a mismanagement scandal.

Allard, a Republican, praised Neil Gorsuch's legal credentials. Gorsuch earned a law degree from Harvard University and later a doctorate in legal philosophy from the University of Oxford. He has been a clerk to two U.S. Supreme Court justices, fellow Coloradan Byron White and current Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy.

"He reflects a deep understanding of the law," Allard said. "One of the most assuring things to me is he does not believe in an activist court. You stick with the intent of the legislation."

His writings include the book The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, which, according to one review, presents arguments on both sides but concludes with "the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable and that intentional killing is always wrong."

In an article titled Liberals 'n' Lawsuits for National Review Online, he quotes Washington Post columnist David von Drehle and skewers Democrats who, he argues, have wrongly pushed for courts to decide issues they can't settle in the legislative arena.

"There's no doubt that constitutional lawsuits have secured critical civil-right victories, with the desegregation cases culminating in Brown v. Board of Education topping the list," Gorsuch writes.

"But rather than use the judiciary for extraordinary cases, von Drehle recognizes that American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education."

Gorsuch would need to go through confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee and to win a confirmation vote in the full Senate, where partisan fighting has slowed or even halted some contentious nominations in the past.

Drew Nannis, spokesman for Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said, "the senator looks forward to the hearings and looks forward to the process that is going to come forth."

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