WASHINGTON (CN) - Taking stock of Neil Gorsuch’s first year on the Supreme Court, legal experts say the justice has hewed to the conservative values that President Donald Trump promised to recognize in selecting a nominee.
"I think he so far has demonstrated that he is exactly who the people who selected and appointed and confirmed him hoped that he would be in every respect," Ian Samuel, a fellow and lecturer at Harvard Law School said in an interview. "So if you were a person in the 2016 election, for example, that voted for Donald Trump because you really cared about the disposition of that empty Supreme Court seat, I think you would look at Neil Gorsuch and you would be very happy."
Experts caution that it can be difficult to appraise a justice after such a short time on the bench, but that nothing in Gorsuch's record, from his close voting relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas to his lofty writing style, suggests anyone should change their expectations for his tenure.
"So far you've got an extraordinarily reliable conservative who as of yet hasn't demonstrated what precisely his conservative voice is," said Mark Graber, a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.
In the 2016 presidential election, 21 percent of voters said the "most important factor" in their choice was the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the historic, year-long blockade by Senate Republicans of President Barack Obama's choice for the position. Of those voters, 57 percent chose Trump, compared with 40 percent who went for Hillary Clinton, according to ABC News exit polls.
After Senate Republicans spent the better part of a year refusing to hold even a hearing on Obama’s nominee, D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Merrick Garland, Trump nominated Gorsuch on Jan. 31, 2017 in a primetime television address.
Nearly a week of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee ensued, and Republicans confirmed Gorsuch on April 7, having voted to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.
Gorsuch sat for his first round of oral arguments at exactly this time last year, March 17, 2017. If there were questions about Gorsuch’s conservative style then, his close voting relationship with Thomas appears to have answered them. Gorsuch has signed onto the same opinion as Thomas in the overwhelming majority of cases in which the court has ruled on the merits — a trend that Samuel said Gorsuch's background would suggest.
"Gorsuch self-identifies as a textualist and an originalist, so in that sense, everything he's said about himself, I think it makes perfect sense that he and Justice Thomas are probably going to agree on a lot of things," Samuel said.
In Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, a major case the court decided last year concerning the constitutionality of a Missouri policy that prevents religious groups from receiving certain state grants, Gorsuch and Thomas sided together three times - once under the majority opinion Chief Justice John Roberts authored, once in a concurrence Thomas offered and a third time in a separate concurrence Gorsuch wrote and Thomas joined.
Samuel also noted Gorsuch's behavior at oral arguments has a hint of Thomas, as the Trump appointee is willing to press attorneys with legal theories that are not directly tied to the briefs filed in the case. This gives voice to a characteristic of Thomas' written opinions that does not shine otherwise because Thomas is almost exclusively silent during oral arguments.