I'm Elizabeth Slattery and I'm Tiffany Bates.

And welcome to SCOTUS 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court,

what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This week we're talking about Justice Neil Gorsuch, first opinion, other justices' early opinions,

and why the Supreme Court might hear

the travel ban gays sooner than we thought. So recently, Neil Gorsuch issued his very first

opinion. Tiffany, tell us all about it. Yes, it's a very exciting opinion, all about the Fair

Debt Collection Practices Act. All right. No, it was kind of a boring case, but this has been tradition with the last few justices,

you know, to give them a unanimous opinion for their first opinion.

So it's not overly, you know, to get them used to things.

So it was 11 pages.

It was unanimous.

It was about statutory interpretation.

But we got a good indicator of what

we're going to get from Neil Gorsuch as a justice, which is exactly what he talked about in his

confirmation hearings and what we read from his writings on the lower courts. It was very clear

and elegant and textualists. They decided the question of what exactly is a debt

collector under this statute. But my favorite part, of course, was at the end when he threw

in a line about the proper rule of the courts. You know, he said some people might not like

that the statute doesn't apply to this person,

but Congress has to fix that.

It's not our job.

...