Researching the record of a Supreme Court nominee—for, say, a WEEKLY STANDARD essay—is always a daunting task, because the nominees tend to be federal judges with long paper trails. But the lift seems much lighter when the nominee is a felicitous writer. And Judge Neil Gorsuch certainly qualifies.

Of course, it would be unfair to compare him to Justice Scalia, whose seat he is nominated to fill. As Andrew Ferguson observed last year, Scalia was a legendarily great judicial writer, ranking among John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert Jackson, and the Supreme Court’s other all-time greats.