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When Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, the Supreme Court stood one vote away from a liberal majority that could have altered the trajectory of cases on voting rights, campaign finance, and regulatory power. Senate Republicans instead refused to consider any nominee from President Barack Obama, leaving the seat vacant through the election. That decision, combined with Donald Trump’s victory, produced Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation and set the stage for a durable conservative supermajority.

The sequence is now familiar yet still consequential. Republicans framed their refusal as a defense of institutional norms, arguing that voters should decide the next justice in the pending election. The argument succeeded politically even as it broke with the recent practice of filling vacancies during election years. Once Trump took office, Gorsuch was nominated and confirmed along largely partisan lines, restoring a five-justice conservative bloc that later expanded after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.

Gorsuch’s record since joining the Court has not followed a simple partisan script. He has joined the conservative majority in major decisions narrowing the scope of federal agencies and expanding religious exemptions from antidiscrimination laws. At the same time, he has occasionally sided with liberal justices on questions of criminal procedure and Native American treaty rights. That independence has made him a recurring variable in closely divided cases, even as the overall direction of the Court has moved rightward on issues from abortion to administrative law.

The podcast series “Becoming Justice Gorsuch,” produced as part of Slate’s Slow Burn, traces this path through archival material and interviews. It highlights how the 2016 vacancy altered not only the Court’s personnel but also the incentives facing future Senate majorities. Both parties now treat Supreme Court vacancies as existential contests rather than routine institutional handoffs. The result is a judiciary whose composition is more tightly linked to electoral outcomes and less buffered by norms of deference.

Public discussion of the Court’s legitimacy has intensified in the years since. Polls show partisan gaps in approval ratings that track the Court’s ideological shift. Legal scholars continue to debate whether the 2016 blockade represented a temporary breach or a permanent change in the rules of judicial appointments. Whatever the verdict, the structural effect is clear: a seat that appeared headed toward one ideological outcome instead anchored a conservative majority whose influence will extend well beyond any single presidential term.