Becoming Justice Gorsuch | 1. Man With a Plan

Summary

Slow Burn: Becoming Justice Gorsuch

Episode 1: "Man With a Plan"

Date: May 13, 2026
Host: Susan Matthews

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Episode Overview

This first episode of Slow Burn’s 11th season, "Becoming Justice Gorsuch," explores the formative experiences and legal philosophy of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Using archival material and first-person accounts, host Susan Matthews traces Gorsuch’s upbringing, early career, and his emergence as both an architect of the Court’s conservative supermajority and its most surprising wild card. The episode centers on a pivotal legal decision—the "Frozen Trucker" case—as a window into Gorsuch's judicial worldview and assesses how his personal background and family history inform his role on the nation's most influential bench.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Frozen Trucker" Case — Gorsuch’s Legal Philosophy

• Case Summary ([00:48]–[04:44]):
  Susan Matthews details the ordeal of Alphonse Madden, a truck driver fired after abandoning his trailer in freezing conditions to save his life. Despite Madden winning before several judges, Neil Gorsuch penned the lone dissent, ruling against him.
  • Gorsuch’s rationale: The statute said workers are protected if they "refuse to operate" a dangerous vehicle. Since Madden operated his vehicle to seek warmth, Gorsuch argued the statute didn’t apply.
• Implications ([04:47]–[08:13]):
  Matthews connects this decision to Gorsuch’s textualist approach: "The judge's job is to follow the words that are in the law, not replace them with those that aren't. Words matter." — Neil Gorsuch ([08:48])

2. The Supreme Court’s Transformation & Gorsuch’s Appointment

• Context ([05:55]–[08:13]):
  Matthews frames Gorsuch’s ascent in the context of Trump’s presidency and the shift of the Supreme Court to a conservative supermajority:
  • Ending affirmative action
  • Overturning Roe v. Wade
• Paradox of Trump Appointees: The GOP-leaning court has sometimes checked Trump himself.

3. The Influences of Family: Anne Gorsuch Burford

• Mother’s Story ([13:22]–[19:31]):
  • Anne Gorsuch Burford, Neil’s mother, was a pioneering and controversial EPA administrator in the Reagan era, known as "Ice Queen" and "Queen Anne."
  • She slashed budgets, hired industry insiders, and was eventually held in contempt of Congress, leading to her resignation—a public humiliation that deeply affected Neil.
  • Anne’s battle against the "bloated administrative state" became a formative influence on Neil’s own skepticism towards bureaucratic power.

4. Gorsuch’s Early Life and Personality

• College Years ([11:38]–[13:09]; [23:14]–[27:48]):

  • At Columbia, Gorsuch was seen as "buttoned up" and a "grown up," viewed by classmates as both polite and inflexible in his conservatism.
  • Notable for debating, “press readiness,” and establishing "The Federalist Paper" student newspaper as a counterweight to campus liberalism.

  "He just always seemed to be a forty-year-old before the rest of us even knew what we were doing with ourselves."
  — Liz Pleshette, classmate ([12:15])

  "He wanted to, like, win." — Liz Pleshette ([23:55])

  • Gorsuch consistently avoided specifics about his family scandal, emphasizing self-reliance and a clean image.

5. Legal Career and the Federalist Society

• Formative Experiences ([29:22]–[30:54]):
  • The episode describes how Roe v. Wade and left-leaning courts energized young conservative legal activists. Gorsuch immersed himself in the Federalist Society during Harvard Law, sharing the view that courts should not "usurp political decisions" (William Pryor, [29:22]).
• Clerkships and Rising Reputation ([30:54]–[31:34]):
  • After Harvard and Oxford, Gorsuch clerked for Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy alongside Brett Kavanaugh.

6. The Attack on the Administrative State

• Philosophy Restated ([32:57]–[35:16]):
  • Gorsuch’s judicial record, especially in the frozen trucker case, flows directly from his distrust of federal agencies.

  "He's obsessed with dismantling the administrative state… constantly trying to diminish their power and give the president greater control."
  — Mark Joseph Stern, Slate ([34:57])

7. The Public Reckoning: Confirmation Hearing & the Frozen Trucker Case

• Hearing Highlight ([35:33]–[38:36]):

  • At his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Gorsuch is challenged by Senator Al Franken on the humanity and logic behind his dissent. Gorsuch sticks to his textualist approach, frustrating Franken—with Franken calling the ruling "absurd" and questioning Gorsuch's judgment ([37:52]).

  Notable Exchange:

  Al Franken ([36:03]): "Which would you have done, Judge?"
  Neil Gorsuch ([37:17]): "Oh, Senator, I don't know what I would have done if I were in his shoes. And I don't blame him at all for a moment for doing what he did do. I empathize with him entirely."
  Al Franken ([37:52]): "It is absurd to say this company is in its rights to fire him because he made the choice of possibly dying from freezing to death or causing other people to die… It's absurd. Now, I had a career in identifying absurdity, and I know it when I see it, and it makes me question your judgment."

Memorable Quotes & Moments

On Gorsuch’s Judicial Philosophy

• Neil Gorsuch ([08:48]):
  "With all due respect to my judicial colleagues, nobody elected us. It's not what we were designed to do… The judge's job is to follow the words that are in the law, not to replace them with those that aren't. Words matter."

On Early Personality

• Liz Pleshette ([12:15]):
  "He just always seemed to be a forty-year-old before the rest of us even knew what we were doing with ourselves."

• Liz Pleshette ([13:03]):
  "If you close your eyes, you’d think you're listening to Jimmy Stewart. Like, golly gee whiz, aw shucks, all American guy… It drove me nuts. It seemed like an act."

On the Frozen Trucker Appeal

• Alphonse Madden ([32:34]):
  "In my opinion, clearly their cargo was more important than my life."

On Gorsuch’s Reputation Among Peers

• Liz Pleshette ([26:34]):
  "He was press-ready from the moment he moved into the resident hall."

• Liz Pleshette ([27:16]):
  "Even if he was vehemently arguing with you, it was laced with civility and tight manners and politeness that you could be fooled into thinking that this is someone who is coming to the venture with loads of respect… But you knew that that wasn't the case."

On Gorsuch’s Motivation

• Susan Matthews ([34:10]):
  "And so it's true that, as Mark says, Judge Gorsuch's ruling was about the administrative state, but I think it was really about his mother."

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Notable Timestamps

• [00:48]–[04:44]: The frozen trucker case: Madden’s story and Gorsuch's rationale
• [08:13]–[09:04]: Gorsuch’s oath and view on judicial power
• [11:38]–[13:09]: Early persona and Columbia years
• [13:22]–[19:31]: The Gorsuch family and Anne Gorsuch Burford's EPA controversy
• [23:14]–[27:48]: Gorsuch’s debating style, college days, and personal reticence
• [29:22]–[30:54]: Rise of the Federalist Society
• [32:57]–[35:16]: Philosophy on the administrative state
• [35:33]–[38:36]: Al Franken drills Gorsuch at confirmation hearing over the frozen trucker case

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Tone and Style

The episode is both investigative and personal, balancing institutional history with intimate character studies. The host, Susan Matthews, directly addresses listener confusion about the Supreme Court and insists on understanding justices as influential, complex actors—just as scrutinized as politicians.

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Closing

The episode closes with the implication that Gorsuch’s controversial ruling in the frozen trucker case may have made him especially appealing to the Trump administration as a Supreme Court pick. The series will continue by delving deeper into Gorsuch’s rise, his role in American legal transformation, and the lasting impact of his legal worldview.

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For further listening, Slate Plus members have instant access to the rest of the season.

Transcript

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[Susan Matthews]

In January of 2009, Alphonse Madden was driving a semi truck along an Illinois highway hauling a shipment of meat. He wasn't sure where his next fuel station was, so he decided to pull over onto the side of the road to double check. That's when things started to go wrong.

[Alphonse Madden]

The brakes on the trailer froze and so I was stranded.

[Susan Matthews]

Essentially, that's Madden talking about what happened to him at a press conference in 2017. The night he got stuck was one of the coldest of the entire winter. The temperature outside was 27 degrees below zero. The trailer was one of those super shipping containers hitched onto the back of the truck. It was the trailer's brakes that were jammed up, making it several tons of dead weight. If Madden kept it attached to the truck and tried to drive, the trailer could skid out across the lanes with no way to stop it or slow it down. Imagine being on the road behind that. So he called into his dispatch center to report the problem.

[Alphonse Madden]

I contacted the company's road assist. They arranged to send a repair unit. I assumed that the repair unit would take no longer than an hour to arrive.

[Susan Matthews]

Madden settled in to wait. But there was another problem. The heat in the truck's cabin wasn't working. Soon the temperature inside had dropped to negative 7. In the cold on the side of the road, Madden fell. He woke up at 1:18am when his cousin called him. His whole body was cold and his cousin told him he was slurring his speech. When he sat up, he heard the skin on his stomach crackle.

[Alphonse Madden]

And then the sensation of not feeling my feet at all prompted me like to panic I wanted to panic.

[Susan Matthews]

But he didn't panic. He called his dispatch center and told them what was going on. He asked them what he should do.

[Alphonse Madden]

They responded by telling me to simply hang in there. As I sat there physically suffering in the cold, I started having thoughts that I was going to die.

[Susan Matthews]

By then, the temperature inside his truck was down to minus 14. He knew he couldn't keep waiting, but he couldn't drive his truck either, not with those frozen brakes. So he did the only thing he could think of. He got out and unhitched the trailer. By this point, he couldn't move his hands. They were frozen in one position. But he managed to disconnect the trailer. And then he drove his truck to an open gas station, where he was able to get inside and start to warm up his frozen body. After about 15 minutes, he drove back to his trailer. The repairman was there. They got the brakes unfrozen and reattached the trailer. Madden continued on his way and delivered the load. Within days, he was fired.

[Alphonse Madden]

They terminated me. And they cited the reason for termination as abandoning a loaded trailer.

[Susan Matthews]

Despite knowing the horrific circumstances of that night, the trucking company said it was against the rules for a trucker to abandon his cargo. The Madden filed a claim against his employer. After some legal back and forth, the Department of Labor eventually ruled in his favor. They said his employer had been wrong to fire him. That's because truckers are protected in dangerous circumstances like this one. But the trucking company appealed. So the case kept going through the courts. For seven years, judge after judge kept ruling in Madden's favor, except for one.

[Alphonse Madden]

That judge was Neil Gorsuch.

[Susan Matthews]

Neil Gorsuch ruled against Madden in 2016. At the time, he was a judge on the 10th Circuit, one of the federal appeals courts, one step below the Supreme Court. Here's why Neil Gorsuch ruled against Alphonse Madden. The law says that workers are protected if they refuse to operate vehicles because they fear for their safety. But Gorsuch said Alphonse Madden hadn't refused to operate his vehicle. He had, in fact, operated it, driving it to the gas station where he warmed up. So the protections didn't apply to him. If this sounds pedantic to the point of absurdity to you, well, you're not alone on a very practical level. What else was Alphonse Madden supposed to do? So there are reasons Neil Gorsuch ruled this way. We'll get into those reasons a little later on. For now, I think his reasoning in this case reveals the true interior of Our justice in question. You might vaguely know who Neil Gorsuch is. If you do, it's because he's no longer just a circuit judge. Neil Gorsuch has been a member of the supreme court for almost 10 years now. He was the first Supreme Court justice appointed by Donald Trump. And that's why we're here. When Slate launched slow burn in 2017, Donald Trump had just become president. That was the reason we launched the show. Everyone was talking about impeachment, but no one really knew what to say about it. So we looked back at Richard Nixon and Watergate. Now, almost a decade later, we're in an eerily similar situation. As we enter the second year of another Trump presidency, it's still hard to know what exactly to do about it. It's not that nothing has changed in the intervening nine years. Plenty has. But one of the parts of the American government that has changed the most is the Supreme Court. Trump's presidency helped create a conservative supermajority on the court, and that supermajority has handed down major rulings, ending both affirmative action and Roe v. Wade. With Congress endlessly stalled and full of Trump apologists, the Supreme Court is also one place that is occasionally keeping the president in check. Take the ruling it handed down in February on tariffs, where six of the nine justices came together to say to the president, you can't actually do that. It's likely they'll also tell Trump he can't just end birthright citizenship. In other words, the court that is now one third Trump appointees is also a thorn in Donald Trump's side. I'm a longtime editor at Slate and a former host and editor of Slow Burn. I've been covering the Supreme Court for nearly a decade now. I'm fascinated by it, especially this iteration of it, and how little regular Americans pay attention. I think we should treat the justices on the high court like we treat politicians in America. I think we should try to understand them as people and thinkers and political actors, because they have a ton of power over our day to day lives. And in order to understand this court, you need to understand one justice in particular.

[Neil Gorsuch]

I, Neil M. Gorsuch, do solemnly swear. I, Neil M. Gorsuch, do solemnly swear. I take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I take it pretty darn seriously. I will administer justice without respect to person an independent judiciary. Our founders fought a revolution for it and do equal right to the poor and the rich. They knew what it was like to have a judiciary that was responsive to the crown to a whimsical king and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform.

[Susan Matthews]

Why is it not the Supreme Court's job to legislate?

[Neil Gorsuch]

With all due respect to my judicial colleagues, nobody elected us. It's not what we were designed to do. All the duties incumbent upon me. The judge's job is to follow the words that are in the law, not replace them with those that aren't. Words matter.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

You have been able to avoid any specificity like no one I have ever seen before.

[Mark Joseph Stern]

He is the most unpredictable vote on this court, and it's not really a close call.

[Susan Matthews]

This is Slow Burn Becoming Justice Gorsuch Episode one Man with a Plan under

[Neil Gorsuch]

the Constitution and laws of the United States, so help me God. So help me God. Congratulations.

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[Neil Gorsuch]

Yep.

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[Susan Matthews]

Do yourself a favor. Visit Jerry. AI Acast. One thing that I've learned about Neil Gorsuch is that a lot of People have no idea who he is. To some extent that makes sense. Even on the Supreme Court, he's kind of just one of the four white guys. They wear robes. It can be hard to tell them apart.

[Liz Pleshette]

At first he just seemed like a conservative chino wearing guy who came from a conservative Catholic prep school.

[Susan Matthews]

Liz Pleshette is one of Neil's former classmates at Columbia University.

[Liz Pleshette]

I met Neil Gorsuch in the first days of college as we were both living on the 12th floor of Carmen Hall.

[Susan Matthews]

It was 1985. Columbia had just become co ed. Liz was in the third class that admitted women. But it had long been a left leaning place. And for that reason, Neil Gorsuch was a minority of sorts in ways that went beyond his beliefs.

[Liz Pleshette]

He was a grown up, he was buttoned up and kind of official and preppy and didn't necessarily have the same vibe as a lot of other students. He just always seemed to be a 40 year old before the rest of us even knew what we were doing with ourselves.

[Susan Matthews]

Neil Gorsuch was the kind of guy who was always wearing freshly pressed khakis. He was tall with good hair, but he was also kind of goofy in one specific way.

[Liz Pleshette]

If you listen to him and you close your eyes, you think you're listening to Jimmy Stewart. You think you're listening to some golly gee whiz, aw shucks, all American guy in overalls and a straw hat. Oh, hi Liz, I'm sure you got some. Something will fling my way that's gonna make me think about politics and get in an argument with you.

[Susan Matthews]

How you're doing. It drove Liz nuts. It seemed like an act.

[Liz Pleshette]

And the more I interacted and got to know him, I learned what his values were and who he admired and he revealed himself in no time.

[Susan Matthews]

We'll come back to Liz in a bit. But first, in order to really understand Neil, you need to understand his mother. His parents were both lawyers, but it was his mother whose career took off in good ways and bad.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

I was usually identified in news reports as the Ice Queen, the Dragon lady or the Joan Crawford of the Reagan administration.

[Susan Matthews]

This is Neil's mother, Ann Gorsuch, giving a talk at American University in 1984.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

Now, I never grabbed a wire hanger to threaten a reporter, but the temptation was there.

[Neil Gorsuch]

There.

[Susan Matthews]

Anne McGill Gorsuch graduated college at just 19 and law school at 22. After practicing law and having three children, she ran for the Colorado state legislature. She won and was soon part of a conservative group looking to change things. As Anne later put it, the group was doing Reaganism before Reagan. Other people described it differently. Anne's group soon earned the nickname the House Crazies. She was voted outstanding freshman legislator and soon had an outsized reputation. Stories about Anne described her as being larger than life. The Rocky Mountain News once said in

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

an editorial that she could kick a

[Susan Matthews]

bear to death with her bare feet. She herself was known as Queen Anne. Queen Anne smoked cigarettes, swore constantly and wore furs. By the time her political career was heating up, her marriage was unwinding. Anne was a conservative through and through, but her husband, Neil's father, was a liberal. They separated by the time Anne's next big job took her to Washington D.C.

[Al Franken]

make no mistake, we will not permit the safety of our people or our environmental heritage to be jeopardy.

[Susan Matthews]

In 1981, Anne was appointed head of the Environmental Protection Agency by her hero, President Reagan.

[Al Franken]

But the economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our environment.

[Susan Matthews]

Ann had lobbied specifically for the job at the epa. Despite not really being a traditional environmentalist. She mostly just thought that whoever ran the agency would have a lot of power. And so she headed to Washington. Neil was just 14, but he was the oldest and he went with his mother. His two younger siblings stayed in Denver with their dad. The EPA had existed for just 10 years when Anne Gorsuch took over. Right away, she brought her conservative credentials to the job. Ann downsized her agency's budget by 22%. And while she was laying off EPA stalwarts, she hired new staffers from the industries she was supposed to be regulating. This got her plenty of attention from the press and from other lawmakers in Washington. Even as she complained about it, she seemed to court the spotlight too. Just over a year into her tenure, Congress started investigating the EPA over allegations that the agency had improperly used funds meant for an environmental cleanup project. At the advice of the Reagan administration, Anne refused to give Congress the documents they needed. And so in 1982, she became the first ever cabinet level official to be held in contempt by Congress. The press was all over it.

[Liz Pleshette]

On orders from the President, Gorsuch refused

[Susan Matthews]

to turn over documents on hazardous waste

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

dumps that the House wanted.

[Susan Matthews]

A federal grand jury will decide whether or not to indict her for contempt. In the middle of all this, Anne somehow found time to get divorced and then get remarried to a guy she had met in the House crazies in Colorado. His name was Robert Burford and he was also working for the Reagan administration in D.C. this made the scandal even worse. Some of Anne's opponents Even claimed she had remarried to change her name and take the scrutiny off her agency. The intense pressure just kept mounting.

[Neil Gorsuch]

Reagan aides had been telling Burford through indirect back channel contacts that she had become a serious political embarrassment. And late today, she gave in.

[Susan Matthews]

In March 1983, less than two years into her tenure, she quit.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

I did submit my resignation to the President of the United States. With regret.

[Neil Gorsuch]

The President called her resignation an act of unselfishness and personal courage. You can walk out of the Environmental Protection Agency with your head held high.

[Susan Matthews]

Anne did not feel that her resignation had demonstrated her personal courage. She was furious about how it all went down.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

Witch hunt, that's what I call it when the liberal media decides to create the news instead of report it. I ought to know.

[Susan Matthews]

She felt that she had been screwed over by the people she had been loyal to, that the Reagan administration had thrown her under the bus. And she maintained that she had done nothing wrong.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

I was charged with everything from absconding with Superfund monies to, you name it, it was charged. Was I convicted of anything? Indeed not.

[Susan Matthews]

All of this must have been pretty overwhelming for teenage Neil. While his mother was battling Congress and getting remarried, Neil had started school at Georgetown Prep, one of Washington's oldest and most prestigious boarding schools. He lived there during the week. This was probably for the best because at different points in Ann's standoff with Congress, the media camped out outside of her house. Ann was not pleased with this.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

While I worried over the same things that other mothers worry about, finding Little League uniforms or ice skates, I also had to find routes that would steer my children clear of the camera crew. That's a sobering reflection of life on the front page.

[Susan Matthews]

The Media even called 15 Year Old Neil to try to get him to weigh in on the drama. Anne was furious.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

Well, if you think the Ice Queen is tough, you ought to have had a run in with the irate mother.

[Susan Matthews]

That reporter was onto something. Though. Neil Gorsuch did have strong feelings about his mother's job and her conflict with Congress. Anne included what her son told her in the book she wrote about her experience in Washington. You should never have resigned, he said firmly. You didn't do anything wrong. You only did what the President ordered. Why are you quitting? You raised me not to be a quitter. Why are you a quitter? Teenage Neil Gorsuch was the opposite of a quitter. I have to imagine the move to D.C. and the jump to Georgetown Prep was hard. I mean, seriously, he moves away from his siblings right as his parents divorce, he starts at a fancy Washington private school right as his mom lands herself in the middle of a political scandal. But Neil seemed to thrive at Georgetown Prep. In some ways, he took after his mother. He embraced her politics, becoming a Reagan obsessive, and he even got involved in student government, becoming student body president. But he seemed determined not to make the same mistakes as she had. More on that when we come back.

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[Susan Matthews]

Your first year terms apply on covered repairs. The most personal book Neil Gorsuch has written is called A Republic. If you can keep it, let me tell you, it's not that personal. It's mostly a collection of speeches he's given and essays on the law. But in the introduction he writes about his family, including his mother. Here's Neil himself reading the audiobook.

[Neil Gorsuch]

My mother was brilliant and a feminist before feminism. Born in Casper, Wyoming, she graduated from the University of Colorado at 19 and it's law school at 22.

[Susan Matthews]

He writes about his mother in just one paragraph.

[Neil Gorsuch]

Her idea of daycare often meant me tagging along. She never stopped moving. When she ran for the Colorado State Legislature, she wore out countless pairs of shoes walking the entire district again and again. As kids, we just had to keep up later, she served as the first female administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington.

[Susan Matthews]

That's it. He doesn't even mention the scandal. He never notes his parents divorce either. This kind of personal reticence is something that Liz Pleshette noticed early on about Neal when they both attended Columbia as undergrads in the 1980s. Despite going to high school in Washington, Neal always just said he was from Colorado.

[Liz Pleshette]

So eventually we would ask more questions and we all pieced it together that his parents were divorced and that he was attending Georgetown Prep in part because his mother was someone who was in the Reagan administration.

[Susan Matthews]

In some ways, this was admirable. He didn't try to ride his mother's coattails. Of course, it's also true that Ann Burford's tenure at the EPA had been a huge scandal just a few years earlier. Maybe he didn't actually want his classmates to know that she was his mother. But even if Neil didn't want to relive his mother's very recent, very public political drama, he absolutely didn't mind provoking his classmates. Neil Gorsuch loved to debate.

[Liz Pleshette]

It was hard for me to resist what I thought were like, abominable ideas. We would get into it and he wanted to, like, win.

[Susan Matthews]

And how quickly did you come to understand what Neil's politics were?

[Liz Pleshette]

The first time we had an argument freshman year in the student lounge, probably. He also 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.

[Susan Matthews]

Whenever Liz and Neil found one another in the common room, they would end up arguing about politics and especially about abortion.

[Liz Pleshette]

I perpetually poked him about, you know, so you have a 12 year old who's pregnant, and how are you going to explain to this 12 year old who is more than statistically likely to be the product of abuse as a 12 year old who's pregnant? Like you're gonna say to this child and this family that she needs to carry a baby that will change her life and her wellbe forever if that's not her choice. And he just would look me straight in the eye and go, yep, abortion is murder. Liz

[Susan Matthews]

Neal expressed his conservative views in the campus newspaper, the Columbia Spectator. He wrote op eds starting freshman year. One defended Ronald Reagan during the Iran Contra scandal. Another criticized Columbia for being obsessed with diversity, but not ideological diversity. Neil even took steps to correct that problem. In his sophomore year, he led the charge to start a new student newspaper. They named it the Federalist paper after the Federalist papers, and it started publishing pointed political commentary with Neil as editor. Given all this, Liz didn't really understand why Neil had picked such a liberal college in New York City of all places.

[Liz Pleshette]

A bunch of us had confronted him in the freshman lounge at some point and said, you're so frustrated with how left wing everybody is here and you know, what you consider to be hippie culture, loosey goosey supportive policies you don't approve of. Why are you here? And he said, I am here because I thought this was the best environment for me to cut my teeth with the opposition.

[Susan Matthews]

By the end of their freshman year, Liz had stopped going to the common room. If she saw that he was hanging out there, she just didn't want to have to deal with debating him anymore. She told me that she had realized that their debates always ended with her getting upset and emotional. But they didn't seem to have any impact on Neil.

[Liz Pleshette]

I mean, honestly, he was press ready from the moment he moved into the resident hall.

[Susan Matthews]

He seemed to have learned a thing or two from watching his mother's career implode.

[Liz Pleshette]

Neil, I think, was very mindful about leading a very squeaky clean life. Like, on paper, the guy looks like unassailable. Nobody would believe you if they heard something about Neil Gorsuch, you know, getting into some shenanigans.

[Susan Matthews]

I don't know if Neil Gorsuch never got into any shenanigans in college. I mean, he was in a fraternity. But it seems clear that what Neil learned in D.C. was that he would never let something like what had happened to his mother happen to him.

[Liz Pleshette]

And even if he was vehemently arguing with you, it was laced with such civility and tight manners and politeness that you could be fooled into thinking that this is someone who is coming to the venture with loads of respect.

[Susan Matthews]

But you knew that that wasn't the case.

[Liz Pleshette]

Oh, no, no. I always felt like Neil could pull off his face and underneath would be like some horrible, scary alien.

[Susan Matthews]

At the end of college, Neil Gorsuch did something that was very Neil Gorsuch. He loaded up on classes so he could graduate from Columbia in just three years. Then he enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1988. This would be another big moment in the making of this man and every conservative lawyer of his generation. In the decades before, the Supreme Court had handed down tons of progressive decisions, thanks to the civil rights movement and the women's movement. In 1973, the court had legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade.

[William Pryor]

Roe changed things. Roe increased the stakes, particularly for Supreme Court nominations. That's just a fact.

[Susan Matthews]

This is William Pryor. Today. He's the chief judge on the 11th Circuit, which is one of the courts right below the Supreme Court. He has a lot in common with Neil Gorsuch. They're both conservatives who went to law school at the same time, and they both went on to become judges. I didn't interview Neil Gorsuch for this podcast. I didn't even try. First, I was pretty sure he wouldn't agree to talk. Supreme Court justices rarely do. But also, I wasn't convinced it would be worthwhile for me or for you. Neil Gorsuch has great media training, and suffice it to say, I think he would have just aw, shucked his way around answering any of my questions. But Judge Pryor was happy to help me understand what conservatives were about to do in the legal world.

[William Pryor]

Well, I had concerns about the role of the Supreme Court and the role of the courts generally in politics. I had concerns that the Supreme Court had usurped what I thought were often political decisions from other legitimate branches or from the people.

[Susan Matthews]

By 1982, conservative students at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School had decided that they had to do something about how liberal the courts were. So they founded something they called the Federalist Society. Here's how Judge Pryor describes the group.

[William Pryor]

It's an organization of conservative and libertarian law students, law professors, lawyers. Its mission statement says that it believes that, you know, that the Constitution that is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary, to say what the law is, not what it should be, and that the separation of powers is central to the proper operation and structure of the Constitution. And beyond that, basically, everything's up for debate.

[Susan Matthews]

Pryor joined when he was in law school, and so did Neil Gorsuch. In the 1980s, conservatives realized that if they wanted more control over the courts, they were going to have to find a way to get it. And this upstart organization was a first step.

[William Pryor]

The Federal Society is a much more mature organization, much bigger organization. This is not an unknown group anymore.

[Susan Matthews]

Neil graduated from Harvard in 1991, but he didn't immediately start practicing law. He clerked for a judge and then studied at Oxford for a year. Then Neil Gorsuch got one of the most prestigious jobs there is for a young law school graduate, a clerkship at the Supreme Court. He was hired to clerk for another Coloradan, Justice Byron White. While he was there, he also clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy alongside another young clerk, Brett Kavanaugh. Throughout his next few years as a lawyer, Gorsuch kept up his old passion for writing. In fact, when Justice White died in 2002, Gorsuch wrote a piece lamenting how we would never see a justice like White again. He also said that the confirmation process for judges had gotten too political. He wrote about two lawyers whose confirmations had gotten delayed for no reason. The first was John Roberts. He is now the Chief justice of the Supreme Court. The other was Merrick Garland. And, well, we'll get to him. For now, I want to end where we started. After Neil Gorsuch worked as a private lawyer and as an attorney in the George W. Bush administration, he became a judge on the 10th Circuit in Colorado. That's what he was doing in 2016 when he heard the case of the truck driver Alphonse Madden. As a refresher in dangerously cold conditions, Madden had been forced to decide whether or not he should unhitch his trailer on the side of the highway so he could seek warmth. And he was fired for abandoning company property.

[Alphonse Madden]

In my opinion, clearly their cargo was more important than my life.

[Susan Matthews]

His court battle became known as the frozen trucker case. And of the many judges who heard it, Judge Gorsuch was out on his own, the only one to say it was okay for the trucker to be fired. What do you think Neil Gorsuch's ruling in the frozen trucker case is about?

[Mark Joseph Stern]

So it's about refusing to cede any judicial authority to the administrative states and here, specifically, the Department of Labor.

[Susan Matthews]

That's Mark Joseph Stern, Slate's legal correspondent, and he says that every other judge who heard the case had put faith in the administrative state. They deferred essentially to the Department of Labor where the trucker had lodged his complaint.

[Mark Joseph Stern]

Look, the Department of Labor is really the expert on what the statute means. They're the ones who are implementing it and protecting people who are illegally punished. And we're gonna defer to that because they know best. And that's a very reasonable interpretation.

[Susan Matthews]

Neil Gorsuch disagreed vehemently. He ruled against what the Department of Labor had decided. That's because one of Neil Gorsuch's staunchest beliefs as a jurist is that no one, everyone besides judges, should get to make rulings. Not the Department of Labor or any other bureaucratic body.

[Mark Joseph Stern]

That was what spurred Gorsuch to be like, how dare you? How dare you Listen to what those beady eyed bureaucrats at the Department of Labor say. These words mean we're the judges. We're the ones with the black robes. We should be the ones deciding.

[Susan Matthews]

And so it's true that, as Mark says, Judge Gorsuch's ruling was about the administrative, but I think it was really about his mother.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

Washington, DC, as you well know, is a special town once described as a city where you can walk five miles in any direction without leaving the scene of the crime.

[Susan Matthews]

Because that was Anne Gorsuch's battle in her time in Washington, too. Like a true Reaganite, she was against the bloated administrative state, even the agency she ran.

[Ann Gorsuch Burford]

It's a typical Washington reaction. If you have an agency that gives you a problem, you do two things to it. You throw a lot of money at it, and you tell it not to do anything that doesn't serve us well. But that's essentially what's happened.

[Susan Matthews]

Neil Gorsuch has focused on this for a long time.

[Mark Joseph Stern]

He's obsessed with dismantling the administrative states. He's obsessed with federal agencies that. The headless fourth branch of government and this idea that they wield all this power without any democratic legitimacy. And so he's constantly trying to diminish their power and to give the president greater control over them.

[Susan Matthews]

Gorsuch would eventually achieve a key goal in his crusade to dismantle the administrative state. But first he would have to ascend to the highest court in the land. And to do that, he would have to answer in public for his ruling on the frozen trucker case.

[Al Franken]

I understand the reasoning behind your dissent, but I'm actually kind of puzzled by it as well.

[Susan Matthews]

That's Al Franken, the former Minnesota senator, questioning Neil Gorsuch at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. It's the spring of 2017 here, a little more than six months after Neil Gorsuch dissented in the case. The ruling had taken on a life of its own for Gorsuch. It became a big controversy during his hearing. I'm going to let you just listen to Franken and Gorsuch's whole exchange.

[Al Franken]

If you fall asleep waiting under 14 below zero weather, you can freeze to death, you can die. And a supervisor says, wait, you gotta wait. So he has a couple choices here. Wait or take the trailer out with the frozen brakes onto the interstate. I don't think you'd want to be on the road with him, would you, Judge?

[Neil Gorsuch]

Senator, you would or not?

[Al Franken]

It's a really easy yes or no. Would you like to be on the road?

[Neil Gorsuch]

I want to be on the road with him. Yeah. With the hitch trailer or the unhitched trailer, Senator?

[Al Franken]

Well, either, but especially with the hitched trailer with the locked Brakes.

[Neil Gorsuch]

No, I don't think that was Okay. I thought that was.

[Al Franken]

I wouldn't want to be there either. Yeah, okay. He gets fired and the rest of the judges all go, that's ridiculous. You can't fire a guy for doing that. There are two safety issues here. One, the possibility of freezing to death or driving with that rig in a very, very, very dangerous way. Which would you have chosen? Which would you have done, Judge?

[Neil Gorsuch]

Oh, Senator, I don't know what I would have done if I were in his shoes. And I don't blame him at all for a moment for doing what he did do. I empathize with him entirely.

[Susan Matthews]

There it is. Neil Gorsuch doing his classic who, me? Jimmy Stewart impression.

[Al Franken]

Okay, just. You've. We've been talking about this case. You haven't thought about for a second what you would have done in this case.

[Neil Gorsuch]

I thought a lot about this case because.

[Al Franken]

And what would you have done?

[Neil Gorsuch]

I totally empathize and understand.

[Al Franken]

I'm asking you a question. Please answer questions.

[Neil Gorsuch]

Senator. I don't know. I wasn't in the man's shoes, but I understand why.

[Al Franken]

I don't know what you would have done. Okay, I tell you what I would. I would have done exactly what he did.

[Neil Gorsuch]

I understand.

[Al Franken]

I think everybody here would have done exactly what he did. And I think that's an easy answer. Frankly, I don't know why he had difficulty answering that. It is absurd to say this company is in its rights to fire him because he made the choice of possibly dying from freezing to death or causing other people to die, possibly by driving an unsafe vehicle. That's absurd. Now, I had a career in identifying absurdity, and I know it when I see it, and it makes me question your judgment.

[Susan Matthews]

What's so interesting is that here Al Franken is looking at this ruling with indignation. He's talking about its absurdity and confronting Neil Gorsuch by asking him the obvious question, what else was this man supposed to do? But as absurd as most non lawyers probably see, the way Neil Gorsuch ruled on the frozen trucker case, it actually might have been what got Neil Gorsuch noticed as the perfect candidate for Donald Trump's first open Supreme Court seat. In the next episode, we'll explain why

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[Susan Matthews]

If you want to hear next week's episode right now, just join Slate plus, you'll get access to the rest of Becoming Justice Gorsuch, and you'll be supporting everything we do here at Slow Burn, including the unique collaboration that's driving this season. Slate reporters who have been covering the Supreme Court for decades teamed up with producers and editors from the Slate podcast team to take a hard look at the high court. Your Slate plus membership makes that collaboration happen and makes this series possible. Here's one More Members get full ad free access to every season of Slow Burn and every other Slate podcast. You can join Slate plus right from the show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you're a member already. Thank you. If not, come join us slate.com slowburnplus.

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[Susan Matthews]

This episode of Slow Burn was written and reported by me, Susan Matthews. It was produced by Sophie Summergrad and edited by Hilary Fry, Mia Lobel and Evan Chung. Our supervisor, our advertising producer, is Joel Meyer. Mia Lobel is the executive producer of Slate Podcasts. Our legal editor is Mark Joseph Stern. We had production help from Patrick Fort. Special thanks to Dahlia Lithwick and Sara Burningham. Original music and sound design by Hannah Sproun. Natalie Matthews. Ramo created the artwork for this season. See you in episode two. Thanks for listening.