The New York Times by ADAM LIPTAK 7/3/2017
WASHINGTON — New justices usually take years to find their footing at the Supreme Court. For Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who joined the court in April, a couple of months seem to have sufficed.
His early opinions were remarkably self-assured. He tangled with his new colleagues, lectured them on the role of the institution he had just joined, and made broad jurisprudential pronouncements in minor cases.
Other justices moved more slowly.
“I was frightened to death for the first three years,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who joined the court in 1994, said in a 2006 interview.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who joined the court in 1991, said he had asked his new colleagues how long it would take to hit his stride. “To a person, they said it took three to five years under normal circumstances to adjust to the court,” Justice Thomas said in 1996. His own circumstances, he added, referring to his bruising confirmation hearings, pushed him toward “the outer limits of that period.”
Estimates have not changed over time. “So extraordinary an intellect as Brandeis said it took him four or five years to feel that he understood the jurisprudential problems of the court,” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote of Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who sat on the court from 1916 to 1939.
Justice Robert H. Jackson rejected Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes’s estimate of three years to “get acclimated,” saying it was “nearer to five.”
Judging by Justice Gorsuch’s early opinions, he is fully acclimated.
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