Prior to the nomination of Judge Gorsuch, the White House spoke with 29 Senators to seek their advice on the nomination.
- More than half of these were Democrats, including every Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- Their consensus advice was to pick a respected mainstream judge.
Judge Gorsuch is the very definition of a mainstream judge.
- In the more than 2,700 cases he has participated in on the 10th Circuit, 97 percent of them have been unanimously decided. He was in the majority 99 percent of the time.
- He has the lowest rate of other judges dissenting from his opinions on the 10th Circuit.
- According to CRS, only 1.5 percent of Judge Gorsuch’s majority opinions were accompanied by a dissent—the lowest of any judge in the study.
- The Supreme Court has never overruled an opinion Judge Gorsuch authored, and only one time in the more than 2700 cases he participated in, has the Supreme Court overruled an opinion where Judge Gorsuch sat on the panel.
- In 2006, the Senate unanimously confirmed Judge Gorsuch by voice vote to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Since his nomination was announced on January 31, Judge Gorsuch has met with nearly 80 Senators.
Judge Gorsuch has gone above and beyond to be fully transparent with and responsive to Senators regarding his record. Prior to the hearing, and in response to requests from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Gorsuch provided:
- Over 70 pages of written answers about his personal record.
- Over 75,000 pages of documents including speeches, case briefs, opinions, and written works going back as far as college.
At the request of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman and Ranking Member, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the White House Archives produced over 180,000 pages of email and paper records related to Judge Gorsuch’s time at the DOJ.
- DOJ provided access to troves of documents that would normally be protected by various privileges; but DOJ went out of its way to provide them to meet the Democrats’ requests.
- This access was historically unprecedented and done in the spirit of cooperation with Senate Democrats.
Judge Gorsuch sat for three rounds of questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee totaling nearly 20 hours.
- Each Senator had the opportunity to individually question the nominee for over an hour.
- Not every Democratic Senator even used their total time.
- Still, this was the longest hearing of any nominee in the 21st century.
Judge Gorsuch answered nearly 1,200 questions during his hearing.
- He answered nearly twice as many questions as Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, or Ginsburg.
Judge Gorsuch was given 299 questions for the record by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee—the most in recent history of Supreme Court nominees.
- Judge Gorsuch has answered those questions by providing another 70 pages of written responses.
- Judge Gorsuch did all this within six days of receiving the questions in order to give Senate Democrats ample time to review the answers prior to the Committee vote and floor consideration scheduled for next week.
Democrats made up their mind on Judge Gorsuch before he was even nominated.
- President Trump gave the American people a list of 21 judges which he would choose from, and the American people sent him to the White House to nominate one of those judges.
- The baseless Democratic opposition to Judge Gorsuch shows that they would have the same opposition to ANY judge a Republican President nominates.
