The federal appeals court based in Denver has commenced its first conference since the onset of COVID-19, bringing lawyers and judges from Colorado and five surrounding states to Colorado Springs on Thursday — plus one guest from Washington, D.C.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch spoke to attendees at the Bench & Bar Conference for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and responded to friendly questions about his personal and professional life. He provided few details about the operations of the nation’s highest court.

“I feel I probably got the best appellate bench training anybody could hope for. You look at the docket we have on the 10th Circuit, how varied it is,” said Gorsuch, who served as a 10th Circuit judge from Colorado prior to his Supreme Court confirmation. “You have a very good read on the whole of federal law in the 10th Circuit in the way that not every circuit does.”

The 10th Circuit hears appeals in federal cases from Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, Kansas, New Mexico and Utah. The Bench & Bar Conference, which is being held at The Broadmoor resort, is the first biennial gathering the court has held since 2018.

Chief Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of Colorado formally announced he will be ending his fixed seven-year term as the top appellate judge at the end of the month. Judge Jerome A. Holmes of Oklahoma, who, like Tymkovich, is an appointee of George W. Bush, will become the new chief judge in October.

Tymkovich introduced Gorsuch, a friend of his from their time as appellate judges, as the member of the Supreme Court assigned to consider certain requests from the 10th Circuit.

“We’ve been educating a lot of easterners for the past 20 years or so as our circuit justice,” Tymkovich quipped. “But of course, Justice Gorsuch needs no such education on the West.”

Gorsuch was a 2017 appointee of Donald Trump to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. While Scalia died during the presidency of Barack Obama, the Republican-majority U.S. Senate refused to consider Obama’s nominee during the remainder of his term.

Gorsuch’s comments to the 10th Circuit conference touched briefly on the unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion to POLITICO earlier this year in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the longstanding constitutional protection for abortion.

“I hope we get to the bottom of this, sooner or later,” said Gorsuch, who voted with the court’s majority in Dobbs in an opinion substantially similar to the leaked draft. He added that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has directed an investigation into who provided the draft document to reporters.

“Improper efforts to influence judicial decision-making, from whatever side, from whomever, are a threat,” Gorsuch said. “The opportunity to hear from your colleagues informally about your initial ideas, your drafts … it’s an invaluable part of your decision-making process. And it improves our final products.”

Conference attendees also heard from a panel of academics about the Supreme Court’s most recent term, and specifically the three decisions of Dobbs, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen and West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency.

Bruen, in which the court’s majority decided gun safety laws are constitutionally-sound only when they are consistent with a “historical tradition of firearm regulation,” puzzled former 10th Circuit judge and current Stanford Law School professor Michael W. McConnell.

“What is all this history doing? What does it mean?” he said. “You district judges out there (hearing challenges to gun regulations) are very likely to be getting briefs about what was meant by some stray remark … in the 15th century.”

In the EPA decision, the court decided that some questions of economic and political significance — in particular, the regulation of carbon emissions — need to stem from a congressional directive before governmental agencies may act.

“It’s interesting how the political views about agencies have shifted. There was a time where it was liberals who were suspicious of agencies because agencies were subject to ‘corporate capture,'” said former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen M. Sullivan, referring to the ability of private industry to influence government regulators. 

“Yet now,” she continued, “we see much more from the conservative side of the political spectrum a skepticism about agencies operating as ‘the deep state.'”

Since the end of the court’s term in June, President Joe Biden’s appointee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, has been sworn in. Gorsuch said Jackson has already set up her office and one of Tymkovich’s former clerks is now a clerk for her.

Although Gorsuch predominantly sides with the other conservative members of the Supreme Court, he occasionally joins the Democratic-appointed justices — notably on matters of tribal sovereignty. He spoke highly of his former liberal colleagues, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and recently-retired Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and mentioned his shared passion for civics education with current Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Gorsuch disclosed his philosophy toward deciding whether to dissent in a case, both as a justice and as an appellate judge.

“You have to really recognize your colleagues have come at this, too,” Gorsuch said. “The majority has spoken, and the dissent is a statement that you really think we’ve made a wrong turn. And you should be duly humbled by all those other considerations before you pick up the pen.”

The 10th Circuit Bench & Bar Conference will continue through Saturday.