With his selection of Neil Gorsuch as his first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Donald Trump seeks to fulfill a campaign promise to appoint a well-qualified jurist who shares the judicial philosophy of the man he will succeed, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Judge Gorsuch’s qualifications for the high court seem impressive. He holds degrees from Columbia University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University, clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices, spent a year working in the Justice Department as principal assistant to the deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush and has served for a decade on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals after unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
He’s even received praise from former Obama acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal.
“Judge Gorsuch is one of the most thoughtful and brilliant judges to have served our nation over the last century. As a judge, he has always put aside his personal views to serve the rule of law,” Katyal wrote in a statement posted by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Twitter. “To boot, as those of us who have worked with him can attest, he is a wonderfully decent and humane person. I strongly support his nomination to the Supreme Court.”
Like Scalia, Gorsuch holds an “originalist” view that the Constitution and laws should be interpreted with respect for the meaning that the words had to the people who voted for them at the time.
This view conflicts with the belief of judges on the other side of the ideological spectrum that the Constitution and laws should be interpreted more flexibly to adapt to changing circumstances. The tension between interpreting the Constitution and upholding precedents is permanently installed in our judicial system. The Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Gorsuch will probe his views on issues including abortion, gun rights, campaign finance restrictions and other matters that are less well-known but equally consequential. For example, Gorsuch has expressed disagreement with the legal precedent that says courts should defer to administrative agencies when interpreting an ambiguous law. This could signal a renewed effort of the judiciary to check executive power, which has expanded significantly in recent years.
Some Democrats have vowed to fight the nomination, though such resistance might be mostly symbolic, given how much power Republicans now hold in Washington and the fact that Gorsuch would simply be replacing another conservative justice, and therefore would be unlikely to lead to a shift in the previous court’s balance of power or significant changes in established precedents. The larger fight will come if and when one of the more liberal justices needs to be replaced. In any case, early indications of Gorsuch’s jurisprudence seem mostly positive, and his credentials merit him fair consideration in the Senate, not mere partisan grandstanding.
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