“This may be one of the best Supreme Courts in terms of writers that the nation has seen in its history,” Justice Gorsuch said. “I’ve got colleagues who are, I think, capable of explaining incredibly complex legal jargon in clear and accessible terms that frankly is a blessing, I think, to the American people.”
For his part, the justice explained that when sitting down to draft an opinion, the foremost goal is to persuade himself that he has come to the right conclusion, and his writing style flows from there.
“So what persuades me is clean sentences, relatively short, to the point, only one idea per paragraph,” the justice said. “And to proceed methodically and syllogistically, as best you can to your conclusion and candidly confront the strongest arguments on the other side. Not bury them in footnotes, not dispense with them with rhetoric, but try and deal with them as fairly as you can.”
In his 2019 book, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It,” which the justice said he wrote in part to help people understand a judge’s role within the legal system, Justice Gorsuch called his originalist approach to case law “the worst form of constitutional interpretation except for all the others.” Any alternative to originalism, he explained to Wallace, would essentially leave judges to decide what was best for society.
