Here are some of the key legal positions that Gorsuch has staked out, plus other background on the potential nominee:

No Fan of Class Actions: In 2005, Gorsuch was a partner at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, where he wrote an amicus curiae brief for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a pending securities class action case, Dura Pharmaceuticals v. Broudo. In an opinion column published in Legal Times, which merged with The National Law Journal in 2009, Gorsuch wrote about the case and criticized what he viewed as baseless litigation by shareholder classes. "The free ride to fast riches enjoyed by securities class action attorneys in recent years appeared to hit a speed bump," he said, "when the Supreme Court heard arguments in Dura Pharmaceuticals v. Broudo … The case is significant because it offers the Court an opportunity to curb frivolous fraud claims merely by enforcing the simple and straightforward causation requirement that Congress wrote into the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act more than a decade ago." Plaintiffs should have to produce more than just allegations in their pleadings, Gorsuch wrote with then-associate Paul Matey. "The problem is that securities fraud litigation imposes an enormous toll on the economy, affecting virtually every public corporation in America at one time or another and costing businesses billions of dollars in settlements every year." The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the class action plaintiffs in the Dura case.

Not Big on Agency Deference Either: In an unusual concurrence to one of his own opinions last year, Gorsuch made it clear that he would nix "Chevron deference" if he could. That is the doctrine under which courts grant broad deference to executive branch agencies in interpreting acts of Congress when the laws are ambiguous and the agency interpretation is reasonable. The doctrine, he said, permits "executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers' design.  Maybe the time has come to face the behemoth." His pronouncement came in an immigration case, Guttierez-Brizuela v. Lynch. The Chevron doctrine, he wrote, turns administrative agencies into a "super court of appeals.  If that doesn't qualify as an unconstitutional revision of a judicial declaration of the law by a political branch, I confess I begin to wonder whether we've forgotten what might."

Off-The-Bench Activities: According to his most recent financial disclosure, Gorsuch has income outside his judicial salary. The University of Colorado Law School paid him $26,000 for teaching last year. Listed as a visiting professor, Gorsuch has recently taught courses on legal ethics and antitrust. He also received $304 in royalties for a book he wrote in 2006 titled The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. A blurb for the book says "Gorsuch builds a nuanced, novel, and powerful moral and legal argument against legalization, one based on a principle that, surprisingly, has largely been overlooked in the debate—the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable and that intentional killing is always wrong." West Publishing also paid Gorsuch $5,000 last year, presumably for being one of 12 co-authors of The Law of Judicial Precedent, including by legal writing expert Bryan Garner and other judges. Most of his other financial holdings are in USAA funds and in Colorado municipal bonds.