Supreme Court

Justice Kagan Does Not Like Neil Gorsuch

Even if they don't like it, Kagan and Gorsuch have to work together for the rest of their lives. 

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Ugh, this guy. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

Neil Gorsuch hasn’t been on the Supreme Court that long, but we already know he’s a bit of a jerk. He gets pedantic during oral arguments, he’s been boorish and childish, and isn’t making any friends on the Court. And it seems it’s getting worse.

There’s a storm cloud blowing over the Court. As Nina Totenberg revealed on the podcast First Mondays, there’s a feud a-brewing between Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch:

My surmise, from what I’m hearing, is that Justice [Elena] Kagan really has taken [Gorsuch] on in conference. And that it’s a pretty tough battle and it’s going to get tougher. And she is about as tough as they come, and I am not sure he’s as tough—or dare I say it, maybe not as smart. I always thought he was very smart, but he has a tin ear somehow, and he doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the conversation.

The increasingly public nature of the Supreme Court quarrels is also fascinating. As Mark Joseph Stern at Slate notes:

[I]t’s astonishing that any reporter would hear details from conference, let alone score some genuinely juicy scuttlebutt. Conference is famously sacrosanct: It’s where the justices gather to cast their votes in the cases of the week, with each explaining his or her reasoning in order of seniority. Nobody else is allowed to attend. If rumors leak about a justice’s behavior in conference—and they basically never do—it is almost certainly a justice who leaked them. And when justices leak—which again, happens very rarely—they do so on purpose. The fact that we know about the “battle” in conference between Gorsuch and Kagan suggests that someone on the court wants us to know.

Neil Gorsuch is alienating his colleagues so much that someone is eschewing tradition and decorum to publicly humiliate him. This goes well beyond ideological differences. Remember, Antonin Scalia was as right wing as anyone who’s been on the Court, and he was a close friend of his ideological opposite, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s Gorsuch, himself, who brings out the ire.

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Even if they don’t like it, Kagan and Gorsuch have to work together for the rest of their lives. And I’m sure they’ll find some way to “make it work.” But in the meantime, court watchers and legal nerds will appreciate the glimpse behind the scenes these fights give us.

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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