Neil Gorsuch plagiarism allegations surface before vote

WASHINGTON: Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s pick for the US Supreme Court, has been accused of including language from other authors in his own writing without proper attribution.

Multiple news outlets reported on Tuesday night that portions of one chapter in Gorsuch’s 2006 book, “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia” and an academic article from 2000 contain text borrowed from other works without credit to the original authors. In some instances, Gorsuch allegedly “borrowed from the ideas, quotes and structures of scholarly and legal works”, Politico reported, citing documents related to the matter.

A prominent example cited by Politico notes that Gorsuch appeared to copy passages for his book that were originally published in an Indiana Law Journal article — without attributing the article’s original author, Abigail Lawlis Kuzma. Gorsuch apparently cited Kuzma’s sources instead, while copying her verbiage nearly word-for-word without crediting her.

Kuzma and the White House have both come to Gorsuch’s defence.

Kuzma, who is now Indiana’s deputy attorney general, said “These passages are factual, not analytical in nature. It would have been awkward and difficult for Judge Gorsuch to have used different language,” Politico reported.