Trump Nominates Neil Gorsuch To Supreme Court -- Here's What We Know About Him
President Donald Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Tuesday night.
It is a move that promises to ensure a conservative court for decades to come, as Supreme Court justices have life-tenure unless they resign, retire or are removed after impeachment.
No Supreme Court justice has ever been removed.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan all tend to lean liberal.
Meanwhile, Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer are considered moderate.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. lean more conservative. With the addition of Gorsuch, they will have an advantage in the court.
The court, which has nine members as per the Judiciary Act of 1869, has been operating with eight after the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February.
While it is the president's duty to nominate a new justice, Republicans in the Senate ignored Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, choosing to wait almost a year to appoint a new justice.
Gorsuch, who sits on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, was picked by Trump from a list of 20 possible justices in order to appeal to conservative and evangelical voters.
Here's what we know about Neil Gorsuch.
Similar to the late Justice Scalia, Gorsuch is a textualist.
Gorsuch practices judicial textualism. This means he promises to interpret the law and the Constitution as it was originally written.
Following Scalia's death, Gorsuch wrote a tribute to his methods of legal interpretation. It read,
Judges should instead strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be — not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best. As Justice Scalia put it, “if you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.
He has an impressive education.
Gorsuch finished his undergraduate studies at Columbia University, received his JD from Harvard Law School and earned his doctorate from Oxford.
He also clerked for two Supreme Court justices.
He has opposed civil rights for LGBTQ+ people.
According the Human Rights Campaign, Gorsuch has called marriage equality a part of the liberal social agenda.
He said,
American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom… as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide…
He ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby in "Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius," which stated some private corporations are "people" under federal law.
This allowed the company, and other corporations, to deny healthcare coverage if it violated their religious belief. This prevents employees from having access to birth control and transgender employs access to hormone treatment, among other restrictions.
Speaking of assisted suicide and euthanasia...
Gorsuch is pro-life, therefore it should come as no shock he doesn't support euthanasia.
While assisted suicide became legal in Colorado in November, he published a book "The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia" 10 years ago.
The Post quotes the book as stating,
All human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.
He's pro-term limits.
In 1992, not long after he graduated from Harvard (alongside his classmate, President Obama), he co-wrote a paper for the Cato Institute that read:
Recognizing that men are not angels, the Framers of the Constitution put in place a number of institutional checks designed to prevent abuse of the enormous powers they had vested in the legislative branch,” he wrote. “A term limit, we suggest, is simply an analogous procedure designed to advance much the same substantive end.
He's crazy young for a justice.
At 49 years old, Gorsuch is the youngest nominee in 25 years and would be the youngest member of the Supreme Court if confirmed. (Elena Kagan holds the current title for youngest at 56.)
With life-tenure, Gorsuch could help uphold conservative ideas in the Supreme Court for decades after Trump leaves office.
TOO LONG; DIDN'T READ?
Grosuch is a well-educated, young judge who leans conservatively.
He may be an opponent to LGBTQ+ causes and women's rights.
He may be a hero for social conservatives.
He's basically Scalia part two.
Citations: What you need to know about Colorado judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court (Denver Post)
