Souter was glib and gave all the right answers at his hearings. I recall watching him and thinking he is not what he seems. He did not strike me as a conservative thinker.
I had the same impression with Gorsuch. Bland answers, several repetitive statements re “no-one knows how I will rule on this”.
This might just be intuition on my part, but he makes me uneasy. I hope I am wrong.
What irritated me about Gorsuch was his smugness. Not saying that should be a disqualifier, it’s just annoying.
re: unease about Gorsuch
The “tell” from Gorsuch that makes me mistrust him came during the episode of Trump’s first Executive Order on the Immigration Pause, when President Trump made the comment about Judge Robarts being a “so-called” judge. You can legitimately make the argument that it was an inappropriate thing to say.
However, Gorsuch also went out of his way to tell the Senators who were interviewing him, their staff, and even his own handlers such florid comments as Trump was disrespectful of his “brothers and sisters of the robe”, to mention just one.
“Brothers and Sisters of the Robe”. Really?!?! ‘Nuff said, at least for me. I believe he’s at least another Roberts.