Becoming Justice Gorsuch | 3. A Lunch Room for Life

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“I think that, you know, Gorsuch is lucky,”

because nobody knows who he is, right? He's likely invisible man on that conservative, supermajority. People know who Barrett is. People know who Kavanaugh is. They don't know who Gorsuch is.

In this season of Slobarn, we've aimed to change that. I'm Susan Matthews, host of Becoming Justice Gorsuch.

In our first episode, you heard

about where Niel Gorsuch came from. What he learned from his mother's rocky tenure in the Reagan administration, and how his conservative world view was shaped by his time on a liberal campus. He had a museum-lit picture of Richard Nixon hanging

in his dorm room, and we all thought that was the weirdest thing in the world. Then, in our second episode, we explored Gorsuch's controversial path to power, and how he accepted a Supreme Court seat that Republicans stole from Merrick Garland.

“I think you're allowed to talk about what happens”

to the last guy. It was nominated in your position. Senator, I appreciate the invitation. But I know the other side has their views of this. Your side has your views of it.

And Senator Judges have to stay outside of politics. We've also explored how he thinks about the law, and how those convictions can lead him to unusual outcomes. Usually, the stories we tell on Sloburn are old enough that they're long over by the time we get to them.

But this season is different. This story isn't over yet.

Niel Gorsuch is still one of the most powerful people in America.

He's 58 years old, and not even 10 years into his lifetime appointment. So for this third and final episode of our series, I'm taking advantage of Slates' prodigious legal talent and interviewing the co-hosts of our excellent legal podcast

Amicus, Mark Joseph Stern and Dalia Luthwick. Y'all recognize Mark from the series. He guided us through key moments in the assent of Justice Gorsuch, and helped us understand him as a legal thinker whose mild mannered exterior belies something entirely different.

He is the king of arrogance mountain at the Supreme Court, and you just would not have really guessed out from his confirmation performance. More from Mark in a moment, let's start with Dalia, who's covered the court sets late for 27 years.

She's been so many people's way into understanding scotists, including mine. I actually started editing Dalia in 2017, right around the time Niel Gorsuch was nominated to the Supreme Court,

and I wanted to find out her impressions of him. I suspect that Niel Gorsuch is a very specific type of legal guy that you are very familiar with. He's a libertarian, he's a former debater, he's someone who's obsessed with the Constitution.

Tell me what you think of him, and in particular, can you explain where you place him

“on the conservative, telebrol spectrum of this court?”

Well, I start with the obligatory.

He's always been lovely to me.

He is polite and kind and very charming, and so like I just want to say, in that, again, wholly obligatory way, that he's personable, he's affable. He reminds me a tiny bit of the Holly Hunter character

in broadcast news I know I'm dating myself now, who just like bursts into tears when asked, like, isn't it exhausting to be the smartest person in the room? Like, you really feel like he carries the weight of being the smartest person in the room.

That mental lies heavy on his shoulders, and you feel that. As to the question you're asking, I guess I would say this, Susan. He is not the way justices of Lito and Thomas

far right wing of the court, right?

He's more complicated than that. He sides with them a lot. He is a movement conservative absolutely, you know, hatched in the kind of stew of some of the grievances and the deregulatory impulses of the federal society,

but he is frequently unpredictable. There's places where he deviates, including in the tariff's case.

“And so I think he's interesting in that you can't simply say,”

I lump him with the meggling of the court that simply agrees that if Trump does it, it's perfect, or that if it owns the lips, it's perfect. He's vastly more complicated than that. I think his methodology is more fixed than that.

I also think he is reliably going to be a part of the far right wing of the current Supreme Court for a very, very long time.

Do you remember when he was named as Trump's first justice,

like what was your reaction? Mark has said that he was kind of like, okay, this person is in totally crazy pants out there, like he was kind of relieved. Did you have that feeling of relief of like,

this is somebody who believes in the concept of the rule of law? You know, I covered his confirmation hearing, all of it stemmed to stern. I think you did too, Susan. And he was a really interesting character.

He was almost like this sort of damp bath mat. Thank you. You could throw over the entirety of the, that's like it just a really deeply weird metaphor,

but go with me for a second.

I'm with you, actually. I see where you're going. Like the astonishing insult to both President Obama and to Merritt Garland and to Democrats on the judiciary committee. Like the unprecedented,

smallness and meanness and viciousness of that. And you know, poor corset, she had to stand there and act as though it hadn't happened to another well-respected jurist. You know, it was just gosh, sucks.

You know, I'm just lucky to be here. I can't believe they brought me up from the minors. Like there was a way in which he just had a real ability to sort of sit there and be like a system's Vulcan. You know, just, I'm just here to talk about doctrine.

Mark, do you feel like a poor corset and he came in and calmed things down?

“I mean, I think that Dahlia is presenting sort of like”

how a neutral observer would interpret that sequence of events. And I completely agree with her. And I think he played the role really well. Like you could let yourself actually forget that he was trying out for a seat that was, you know,

stolen from Obama as you said Susan and he did take the temperature down with this sort of persona that he put on if the wet bath mat. It was remarkable in retrospect

to see how much criticism and harsh questioning he took without any kind of angry reaction. Now that we know like who he really is, it must have been extraordinarily difficult for corset to stifle his instinct to snap back

at the Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing. How do you know what he's really like now? What have you seen since? I have attended and listened to enough oral arguments to know that he is often a self-righteous bully

and that he can be arrogant and smug and he's like a cat with a mouse and just like plays with his prey before devouring it. He can be notoriously a real jerk on the bench and he's also sometimes kind of rude to his colleagues.

I would say he mostly directs the arrogance toward council but he can sometimes talk over his colleagues interrupt, kind of brush off their questions or step in in a way that kind of breaches protocol like try to save council from a tough question

asked by a liberal, you know all this stuff they all do it to some extent but corset's attitude on the bench is very hotty in a way that stands out among a group of people who can certainly all be hotty.

“I mean, you have to be able to do that to become a justice.”

I just want to add one thing it's funny, there's been a kind of cottage industry that measures how many laughs each justice gets over the course of a year and folks may remember this sort of famously started, you know, Justice Scalia left out loud funny. I was shocked to learn that in 2025

it was just this corset that the data shows got the most laughs but when you poke it at a little it is a lot of it like kind of mean

on like our side hustle as comedians.

“corset's just funnyness isn't always funny.”

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I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty.

I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty.

I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty.

I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty.

I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty.

I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's a bit petty.

I mean, it's a bit petty. I mean, it's bad for them. It's bad for the court. Right. So, of course, they don't want to be dragged into it.

“But I think that, you know, Gorsuch is lucky because nobody knows who he is, right?”

He's like the invisible man on that conservative supermajority. People know who Barrett is, people know who Kevin is. They don't know who Gorsuch is. And so in a really deep way, when Trump has a tantrum, Gorsuch of everybody gets off Scott free, right?

Mark, you've thought a lot about the fact that Neil Gorsuch is strangely for this to the left of any sitting justice and possibly any justice on Indian law. And he's extremely consistent in his rulings here. And your theory is not that this is because he's a Westerner, you have a broader theory about this, and it will bring us into the conversation about originalism, which I'm sure

is the one that every single listener is just waiting for us to have, uh, tell us your theory. Yeah, so I mean, I don't think it's because he's a Westerner because I don't believe that he's really a Westerner. I think again, you know, dude went to Georgetown trap like, come on, he's a Bethesda boy.

Um, basically, I think that Gorsuch has this view of the Constitution is more or less

divinely inspired. He thinks it's like a perfect document. He thinks that it laid out this ideal system of government, and that all of our modern hills can be attributed to deviations from the Constitution's original design. And he correctly notes that the Constitution is originally understood, respected tribal sovereignty, the Constitution respected tribes as their own separate nations that held a serious measure of sovereignty apart from the

U.S. government and the states, and they were supposed to be sort of dealt with as a nation to nation, thing where we would have treaties with the tribes. We would recognize their own powers over their own affairs. And of course, all of that went haywire within a few decades of the Republic because the United States decided that we would rather steal their land and drive them west. And so we basically abolished tribal sovereignty. We, uh, you know,

“forcibly removed many, many native people from their ancestral lands. And then we spent many”

years trying to forcibly assimilate these people into Western culture and to sort of destroy their tribes and their traditions. And Gorsuch sees with remarkable clarity how bad all of that was. And I commend him for for his writing on this because he really does write quite

And his theory is basically this happened because we betrayed the Constitution, because we deviated from its original meaning, which was supposed to recognize the sovereignty of tribes and the power of native people over their own affairs. And so his battle in this area is

always to return us to those early days of what the framers envisioned at the constitutional

convention and to reject the later kind of Andrew Jackson era of repudiation of tribal sovereignty and native rights. And it's another area where to be fair, he is kind of principled and consistent in a way that you wouldn't necessarily expect from a typical movement conservative jurist.

“I completely agree with Mark. I think in a sense, he is the most principled originalist”

if you think about how the framers thought about the relationship between the law and the Indian tribes, he has been trueer to that, you know, in terms of consistently upholding that that framing of the relationship more than anyone. And props to him and we should note that a lot of the tribe supported his nomination to the court for that reason. They knew that and they foresaw that. I think that there's an interesting trap that Senate Democrats sprung for themselves and it

goes to the mistaken characterization of what it is that the Constitution is supposed to do. And we got into a big old wormhole in the Gorsuch nomination and you will remember it because they kept asking him, "Are you going to fight for the little guy?" And you heard that from Al Franken, you heard that from Sheldon White House. I mean, all up and down the line. You know,

“there was like real friction over like what is the answer to that? Who is the little guy, right?”

And in a like strange ontological way, I think Gorsuch has made decisions about who the little guy

is in his constitutional worldview that are not always wrong, right? And so when he is, you know,

deciding Bostock like he's actually making a kind of a principled decision about who the law is meant to protect, right? He has very fixed ideas about who the little guy is. I think he really believes that the little guy is always someone who he very cunningly and often frited with untruths, then portrays as like this very John Wayne characterization of who the little guy is, but it's unearingly some, you know, dude, usually some dude, who is just trying to get out

from the strangulation of a million unfair regulations that are in Gorsuch's telling the opposite

“of freedom. And I think one through line that you can really find is he has a story about who he's fighting”

for that is entirely self-fulfilling based on who he decides is being over-regulated or regulated in an unfair way. And so when that happens to be a little guy that you're like, hey, you know, it's not fair to, you know, exclude on the basis of sex, right? Or it's not fair to treat native tribes as second class. Then that suddenly becomes, oh, wait, he must be a liberal. He's not a liberal. He just has an iron-clad lock in his own mind on who the little guy is. Yeah, I had a great

example to that. There's this case that lays out exactly the dynamic doll that is describing. It's called Bitner vs United States. I actually think he decided it correctly. It's a five-four decision about this guy, Alexander Bitner, who failed to report foreign bank accounts and violation of federal law. The question was how big his fine was going to be. And here's how Gorsuch introduces this guy. He says, "Born and raised in Romania, Mr. Bitner immigrated to the United States at a

young age in 1982. He worked first as a dishwasher and later as a plumber and along the way became a naturalized citizen. After the fall of communism, Mr. Bitner returned to Romania in 1990 where he launched a successful business career. But like many jewel citizens, he did not appreciate that U.S. law required him to keep the government a prize of his overseas financial accounts even while he lived abroad." Okay, so you think, like, oh, man, it sounds like this guy really

got ensnared in this kind of regulatory trap that he had no reason to know about, like, he's a hard-working

dude. Why should he be punished for this, right? Here's the truth. This man had more than $16 million

report as many as 272 accounts that he had mysteriously spread his many, many millions through.

And then tried to get out from the massive fine that the government levied against him. You really wouldn't guess that from hearing about this patriotic dishwasher who, like, escaped communism to build a career in America, and the split screen between how Gorsuch describes this guy and how the dissent by just as far as describes him shows you exactly how Gorsuch just latches onto this idea. Here's the little guy. I will defend him at all costs. Like, this poor man needs me to step up

for his rights. And then you read the full record and you're like, this is the little guy if you think that millionaires are the most sort of discriminated against people in the country.

“And I think Gorsuch probably does. Yeah, totally. I mean, to go back to the book that”

Dahlia mentioned in 2024, I think it was. He publishes this book called "Overworld the burden and cost of too much law in America." Something like that. And it's chapter after chapter of these stories of these people that he is very deliberately casting as the little guy. And after it comes out, people journalists mostly start fact checking it and they're like, what? Like,

journalists go and find these people. And basically, all of them are like, I wouldn't really have

characterized my legal battle. That generously toward myself as just as Gorsuch did. So it's this very strange compulsion to do this. And I wonder if one of the reasons he does this is because he gets such a kick out of appearing principled. And I do believe, I think that we all believe, that he has a very strong sense of, I'm an originalist. I read the text. I am a textualist. I have this theory of the law. And I apply it no matter what. He has this theory. And so I wonder

if you both think that sometimes he does this because then it allows him to do the thing where he's like, I'm just following the law. And he feels like he can be internally consistent. And then

“it yields these totally outlandish things. Like, I think the next case, obviously, to talk about”

is the praying football coach, where it's just kind of like, what are you talking about here, Marc, can you outline the praying football coach story for us very briefly? Yes, this was about coach Kennedy, the public school football coach who would go to the 50 yard line in the middle of games and pray very, very loudly and publicly with his own team and often the opposing team. In a way that we know from the record made his own players feel coerced into participating because they were

worried they wouldn't get good positions if they didn't pray to God with coach Kennedy. And he was told to stop doing this. He was penalized for refusing to stop. He then sued alleging his

first amendment rights had been violated. This Supreme Court ruled in his favor just as

Gorsuch wrote the opinion. And he completely misrepresented the facts. He claimed that coach Kennedy was engaged in quiet personal prayer that was not creating any kind of public disruption and not coercing any students into joining him and was not doing any of the things that on the record, it was demonstrated. We're happening because of this, like a huge spectacle, right? News Media was there. Students were rushing the field. Everybody was doing these big prayers with coach Kennedy

and Gorsuch just erased all of that and claimed that this was just one lonely quiet man trying to whisper a little prayer, obscurely, to his own God. And my question for both of you here is

“when a Supreme Court justice does something like that. What is the remedy?”

I mean, there's no, the remedy is what justice said in my order puts in her dissent, right? She literally affixes a photograph of coach Kennedy in a prayer circle surrounded by players taking the knee. This is the private intimate prayer he's supposed to be having. I mean, you just don't see a lot of photographs, especially grainy black and white ones that look like there from the 1950s that are offended to an opinion disorder, essentially put the lie to the majority

opinion that this is just coach Kennedy off on the sidelines whispering to his Lord. But here's what I mean by, what is the remedy is that for people who are on the outside of the Supreme Court bubble, I think it's just hard to grasp that somebody who is participating in all this pageantry, who's dawning this robe, who is doing this, is willing to just kind of lie like this.

go to doing and why? And like, oh, I don't really know that I have to just say they understand

the law and I do not. How do you bridge that gap between the absurdity of what they're willing to do with the facts and the reality that anybody can see in a photograph? I think dolly ago. So maybe I would just say this. The one interesting thing that corsage kind of inherits from Justice Kennedy is an obsession with civility. His hearing was like a meta conversation about civility, right? How dare the Democrats not treat him with respect

and civility? And this is right again in the wake of just blanking, merit garland, in intolerable and indefensible ways. But I do think it is sort of interesting that

there is a version of the conversation about civility and the court that has turned into

“you must blindly respect the court. And any criticism of the court, whether it's the shadow”

docket or a profound factual misrepresentation the way we got in that Kennedy case, whatever it is is in civil. You know, when Justice Kagan talks about civility, which she means is we listen to each other. That's not what Justice corsage means when he talks about civility. When a lot of the justices, I would probably say Justice Alito above all, talks about civility, what he means is you have to respect what the court says and any criticism of

the court, any attempt to call into question, whatever it is, who's in fact or the behavior of the

justices or, you know, Harlan Crow like paying for your mom's house, all of that is coded as

in civility. And so I think one of the turns that you're, I think scooping at here that is really interesting is that it used to be the case that if there were a factual error in the record, the remedy was for journalists like me and Mark to say hey, that's not what Coach Kennedy was doing

“at all. But I think one of the really sort of pernicious recent developments at the court”

is immediately when you do that. You're called out as not just uncivil. You're also called out as like wanting people to go protest at Brett Kavanaugh's house. And so I just think it's an interesting turn and in some ways I carbonate that turn to course it's just confirmation here and because that's when that language I thought started to be deployed in a way that was aimed at shutting down even legitimate criticism of the nominee or the court as opposed to oh we really want to talk

about civics. I'll just add I think when you have the power to literally make up the law and then declare it into existence it's very tempting to assert the power to make up facts and declare them into existence to make up your own reality. And it's a temptation that more than one justice is certainly fallen for. Of course it just isn't the only one who does this. And you know just as his like Clarence Thomas make up history or butcher history all the time like you know the so-called

originalists will use these outrageous false historical claims to justify their conservative

“decisions and and we've just grown sadly used to it by this point. I think that for normal people”

who are frustrated by this one little glimmer of optimism is that there is this kind of developing theory that I think is very persuasive among legal scholars that a decision rooted in objectively false facts is more vulnerable to a reversal in the future and it's certainly more vulnerable to being kind of distinguished away in the lower courts. And so for instance you know if a football coach went out and did what coach Kennedy actually did in real life right now and then got fired and sued

a law court could say well you weren't engaging in what the Supreme Court said was okay. The Supreme Court said it was just quiet private prayer. This was public prayer so different case. So you know we're going to go by what the Supreme Court said and we're just going to follow what they actually claimed rather than you know what reality shows and I think in the future you could easily see a Supreme Court saying about this case you know we know the Supreme Court made this ruling but it

was built on bogus claims it was built on objectively false facts and so we feel that it's not really as entrenched or as stable or as legitimate as precedent and we don't feel the obligation to follow it as precedent and we feel it's much more vulnerable to just overturn and and I do think that if the court ever swings back to the center of the left we will see a fair amount of that and I mean just you know to be clear like the current conservative Supreme Court he does this all the

and bogus history and that made it more vulnerable to a reversal to can certainly play at that game. And that little note of ominous optimism about the future we're going to take a quick break here. When we come back I'll ask Mark and Dahlia to talk about the years and decades ahead and what to expect from Justice Gorsuch. Or simply the moment of silence.

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Then we'll talk about it. More information about the Commerce Bank.de/effolksgeschichten. [Music] We're back. I want to ask you both why you think people regular people should care about corsage and what to watch for in the coming years with this justice.

“I mean, I guess I will say he's interesting, right? I mean, I think this series proves that”

he's not, I don't think he's a cartoon character, you know, he's not completely predictable. You know, in a world of highly polarized legal thinking, sometimes he can surprise you, and I think as we have all said, in certain interesting internal ways, he is consistent. As I said, when you ask like, should liberals hold out, I hope that he's going to be the swing justice of our time, like dear God, no, because that would mean that there would be four people

to the right of him, like no. But is he going to occasionally surprise us? I think he clearly has and clearly will. I think as we've all suggested, and this is the basis for this podcast, he is the most misunderstood, undercovered, you know, he's just a guy who could be sitting there

“and I'll like Scooby-Doo costume, and nobody would know because nobody pays attention. And so I think”

on its own terms, that becomes interesting. But I just kind of want to end where Mark and I so often and these conversations, which is it is a catastrophic error to say that because Neil Gorsuch is the fifth or the sixth vote for this or that proposition, that that is what the law is, as opposed to that is what that this supermajority that was constructed in order to change the world has ruled, and so I just want people to just understand that watching how five or six

justices get to where they're going is a part of the game, but thinking about how this court came to be this way has to be like the whole enchilada, which is a food by the way, Mark, that was not introduced to the Supreme Court cafeteria on just to score such as what.

And, Dorsal of that, I will say a couple things. First, when Gorsuch is on your side,

it feels so good. Like when he's beating up council during oral arguments for the good guys, right, and he's like going to bat for the correct legal proposition, it's just the best feeling in the world. And I remember during this native rights case, it was about the attempt to protect native children from being adopted out by non-native families. He just tore into the Texas Lister General. And, you know, based on everything I've said, I should have been like,

"Oh, it was a breach of decorum, but I loved it because that dude deserved it." And because Gorsuch was right, and like it's just so difficult in these relatively rare occasions when Gorsuch is dead, right, to remember why you hate him, because like he comes across as the righteous warrior

said that it's like fairly critical of him, but there are cases where he is not just correct,

but the most correct on the bench. And that alone makes him worth watching, because those cases

“are sometimes extraordinarily important. And it will be key for him to not only stay correct,”

but to try to get the support of at least one conservative colleague and bring them over for, you know, the rare decent five to four decisions that the liberals are able to win. The other thing I'll all say is that he is just such a weirdo and so idiosyncratic and so committed to doing exactly what he wants and never compromising. I mean, he's going to stick to his guns. And I think that's one of the overarching themes of this conversation that sometimes when

he sticks to his guns, it leads the court to a really good place. And so we need to keep a lookout for the cases where Gorsuch is getable. We need to stay optimistic that there will be times when Gorsuch remains principled. And even though he can be a nightmare on so much, a nightmare on religious freedom, a nightmare on race discrimination or affirmative action, he can be a dream on other things. And if you are a very smart progressive lawyer right now, and you are trying to figure

out tactically how to move the needle on some big cases of the Supreme Court, it is possible to figure out how to craft a vehicle that could get Gorsuch. You're not going to get Thomas,

“you're not going to get a leado. So that is where you need to be focusing on a six-three court.”

You've got to hope you can get Gorsuch and at least one of his brethren to come along for the ride. And those are the cases that can make a difference for the good guys right now. Thank you both so much for talking through all of this, for all of your insight and for all of your work in particular reading all of those opinions. So most of the rest of us don't have to. Thanks Susan. Thank you Susan. Thanks for having us.

This is the last episode of Slowburn Becoming Justice Gorsuch. But as we all know, Justice Gorsuch's story is far from over. He's just 58 years old and he has this seat for life,

which means there's always more to cover. So let's take a moment to talk about some news

that's broken just in the last few weeks. On April 29th, Skoda's handed down a big decision in a voting rights case called Louisiana vs. Calen. If you haven't heard of it, it was a six-three decision with all the conservatives on one side, including Gorsuch of course, and all the liberals on the other. In the decision, the six conservatives declare section two of the Voting Rights Act Unconstitutional. It's actually the third recent Supreme Court ruling

chipping away of the Voting Rights Act. But this one is more like a sledgehammer than a chisel. Section two was the part of the act that was specifically designed to ensure minority representation in Congress and lower levels of government. The April 29th ruling has cleared the way for Jerry Mandarin that's likely to dramatically change the makeup of Congress, favoring white Republicans over black Democrats. Oh, and do you want to know something else about

Section Two of the Voting Rights Act? It was passed back in the 1980s and one of the lawyers who worked in the Reagan administration trying to block its passage is none other than John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court. He's been trying to undo it ever since. What might be even more disturbing about this ruling is that it also asserts something very strange. Something that I would have thought Neil Gorsuch himself would take issue with.

It basically tells Congress that not only was its legislation, the Voting Rights Act wrong, it says they can't even try to address the supposedly legal problems in a new law. They just can't legislate on this anymore. In other words, the ruling says the court and the court alone

has the right to decide these critical matters of representation in our democracy.

That is not how the separation of powers is supposed to work in America. So make no mistake. The conservatives on this court know just how much power they have. They are using it to change

“our laws, our government, and our democracy. And that's why we're going to keep covering them”

as the political actors they are. That essential coverage continues over the next two months. The Supreme Court is about to rule on many important cases this term and slates coverage of the courts this time of year is so extensive, unflinching, and so nonstop that we gave it a name. We call it opinion, Palusa. You can catch our coverage in a bunch of places. First, on our sister podcast, Amicus, where Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick

are dropping emergency episodes when the biggest decisions come down. And also, unslate.com,

the decisions reshaping the country, and what those decisions cost to the rest of us.

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on behalf of everyone at Slate, thank you. Again, become a member at Slate.com/SlowburnPlus. Slowburn becoming Justice Gorsuch was written and reported by me, Susan Matthews, an executive produced by Neil Lobel. Hillary Fry, Neil Lobel and Evan Chung edited the show.

“The slow burn production team is Sophie Summer grad and Joel Meyer. Our legal editor is Mark”

Joseph Stern, special thanks to Dahlia Luthwick and Sara Burningham, original music and sound design by Hannah Brown. Our work for this season came from Natalie Matthews Rambo and Ivy Lee's Simone's. We had production help from Merritt Jacob Patrick Fort and Ben Richmond. Thank you to Slate's Katie Rayford, Caitlyn Schneider, Alexandra Cole, Joshua Metcalf, Brian Flynn, Heidi Strongmoon, Seth Brown, Greg Lavali, Chase Felker, Jeremy Stahl, Jeffrey Blumer,

and Slate's editor-in-chief Hillary Fry. Thanks for listening. I'm Susan Matthews. The Supreme Court isn't going anywhere. Neither is Slate's coverage of it. Slate Plus is how you keep it going. For yourself, for us, and for the Republic we suppose. Members get full ad-free access to Slope Burn and every Slate podcast, including our complete archive of past seasons. And your membership supports the kind of in-depth court coverage you've been listening to.

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