Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch peaked at the right time

WASHINGTON — Federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch cried on the ski slopes of Colorado when he learned of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's death last year. Then in the months that followed, he wrote a series of notable dissents and concurrences that helped him become Scalia's likely successor.

With Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Gorsuch's nomination set to begin Monday, senators don't have to look very far back to find some of Gorsuch's most significant opinions, including two from what he described as his 10 most significant cases.

He weighed in on Planned Parenthood funding and the rights of companies to fire workers, both key conservative causes. He showed his independence by siding with a suspected drug dealer's and a suspected child pornographer's claims of constitutional protection from illegal searches. He displayed a loyal adherence to Supreme Court precedents as well as a willingness to question those on shaky ground.

And in a less noteworthy criminal case, Gorsuch made crystal clear his belief in "originalism" — a judicial philosophy championed by Scalia that calls for strict adherence to the words and intentions of the nation's founders.

"Ours is the job of interpreting the Constitution," he said. "And that document isn’t some inkblot on which litigants may project their hopes and dreams for a new and perfected tort law, but a carefully drafted text judges are charged with applying according to its original public meaning."

Since his name was included on President Trump's second list of potential nominees in September, liberal and conservative lawmakers and interest groups have pored over Gorsuch's decade-long record on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, based in his native Denver. The intensity of their efforts soared after Trump nominated the 49-year-old Coloradan on Jan. 31.

But a look at Gorsuch's writings in just the year since Scalia's untimely death at a Texas ranch — a period in which he and other top-rung conservative appeals court judges knew the election of a Republican president could lead to a high court nomination — offers a telling glimpse of his judicial philosophy on the separation of powers, federalism, business and labor, personal privacy rights and Supreme Court precedents.

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Here's a look at five key cases decided since Scalia's death, including three in which Gorsuch dissented:

Federalism: On Feb. 22 of last year, Gorsuch and his appeals court colleagues struck a blow for states' rights by questioning whether federal jurisdiction over interstate commerce can block states from requiring that out-of-state retailers submit reports to states seeking to collect sales taxes from consumers.

"The whole field in which we are asked to operate today — dormant commerce clause doctrine — might be said to be an artifact of judicial precedent," he wrote in concurrence — one that eventually may "wash away with the tides of time."

Privacy rights: Three weeks later, Gorsuch dissented from a three-judge panel's decision that upheld a police search of a suspected drug dealer's home despite an array of "No Trespassing" signs. Gorsuch, who like Scalia frequently stuck up for the rights of criminal suspects and defendants, said the officers lacked a warrant to knock on the door.

"There can be little doubt that the government’s actions constituted a search of a constitutionally protected space," he said in a 29-page dissent that exalted "the ancient rights of the people."

Labor relations: On Aug. 8, Gorsuch dissented in a dispute that has come to be known as the "frozen trucker" case. He said a trucking company was within its rights to fire a truck driver who deserted his disabled trailer in freezing temperatures rather than wait for help to arrive.

"There’s simply no law anyone has pointed us to giving employees the right to operate their vehicles in ways their employers forbid," he wrote. "Maybe the (Department of Labor) would like such a law, maybe someday Congress will adorn our federal statute books with such a law. But it isn’t there yet."

Separation of powers: Two weeks later, Gorsuch wrote one of his best-known opinions in a case that pitted an undocumented immigrant against a federal agency seeking to keep him out, despite an appeals court ruling that cast doubt on the agency's authority. His 14-page ruling in favor of the immigrant was unanimous — but Gorsuch went on to issue his own 23-page concurrence questioning a 1984 Supreme Court precedent that grants deference to administrative agencies.

"There’s an elephant in the room with us today," he began, before excoriating two high court cases that "permit executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design. Maybe the time has come to face the behemoth."

Judicial authority: On Oct. 28, after he had been added to Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees, Gorsuch dissented from the appeals court's 6-4 refusal to reconsider the Utah governor's effort to strip funding from Planned Parenthood. Gorsuch said a three-judge panel should have accepted a district court's finding that the action was due to concerns about potentially illegal activities, not opposition to legal abortion.

"Preliminary injunction disputes like this one recur regularly," he said. "Ensuring certainty in the rules governing them, and demonstrating that we will apply those rules consistently to all matters that come before us, is of exceptional importance to the law, litigants, lower courts, and future panels alike."