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Neil Gorsuch on Corporations
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Taught law school courses on anti-trust and legal ethics
Before his judgeship, the Ivy League-educated Gorsuch spent much of his professional life in Washington, D.C. He began his legal career as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy, in the early 1990s. He also previously
worked in private law practice for a decade and was the principal deputy to the U.S. associate attorney general during the George W. Bush administration.He is married, has two daughters and lives in Boulder, where he is also an adjunct
law professor at the University of Colorado. He has taught law courses on antitrust issues and legal ethics and professionalism, according to his biography on the university's website. He also wrote a 2009 book that argues against the
legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia.
His mother, the late Anne Gorsuch, was the first female director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under then-President Ronald Reagan.
Source: Newsweek magazine on SCOTUS confirmation hearings
, Jan 27, 2017
Don't apply "dormant commerce clause" to limit state laws
The "dormant commerce clause" treats the Constitution's commerce clause as a kind of presumptive limitation on the power of states to make laws that unduly burden interstate commerce, even if Congress has never passed a relevant law. A 2015 decision
written by Gorsuch, Energy and Environment Legal Institute v. Epel, declined to apply the dormant commerce clause to strike down a clean-energy program created by Colorado on the grounds that it might negatively affect traditional energy producers
outside the state.Gorsuch's opinion plainly takes some joy in demonstrating that not only does the dormant commerce clause not apply--the doctrine also doesn't make much sense.
That same instinct is present last year in DMA v. Brohl, in which
Gorsuch singled out one aspect of dormant commerce clause doctrine--the Quill rule that exempts out-of-state mail order sales from state sales tax--as an "analytical oddity" that "seems deliberately designed" to be overruled eventually.
Source: ScotusBlog.com on SCOTUS confirmation hearings
, Jan 13, 2017
Page last updated: Mar 21, 2022