China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Appellate judge pick for top court
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Neil Gorsuch for a lifetime job on the US Supreme Court, picking the 49-year-old federal appeals court judge to restore the court’s conservative majority and help shape rulings on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control, the death penalty and religious rights.
The Colorado native faces a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the US Senate after Republicans last year refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the February 2016 death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.
Gorsuch is the youngest nominee to the nation’s highest court in more than a quarter century, and he could influence the direction of the court for decades.
Announcing the selection at the White House flanked by the judge and his wife, Trump said Gorsuch’s resume is “as good as it gets”.
“Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline and has earned bipartisan support,” Trump said.
“Depending on their age, a justice can be active for 50 years. And his or her decisions can last a century or more, and can often be permanent,” Trump added.
Gorsuch is a judge on the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals and was appointed to that post by President George W. Bush in 2006.
Gorsuch is considered a conservative intellectual, known for backing religious rights, and is seen as very much in the mold of Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the court for decades.
“He plays it straight. He sticks to principles, and his opinions reflect a consistency regardless of who is in his courtroom,” an unnamed official said of Gorsuch.
Trump made his choice between two US appeals court judges, Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman of the Philadelphiabased 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a source involved in the selection process.
Gorsuch became the youngest US Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 selected Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time.
He is the son of Anne Burford, the first woman to head the US Environmental Protection Agency. She served in Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration but resigned in 1983, amid a fight with Congress over documents on the EPA’s use of a fund created to clean up toxic waste dumps nationwide.
Trump’s selection moves to restore a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that had been in place for decades until Scalia died at age 79 on Feb 13, 2016.
Trump, who took office on Jan 20, got the opportunity to name Scalia’s replacement only because the Republicanled US Senate refused to consider Obama’s nominee for the post, appeals court Judge Merrick Garland. Obama nominated Garland on March 16, but Republican senators led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denied Garland the customary confirmation hearings and vote.
Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate. The Democrats, mindful of Garland’s rebuff, could try to block the nomination with procedural hurdles.
The new appointee would expand the court’s conservative wing, made up of John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Gorsuch attended Columbia University and, like several of the other justices on the court, Harvard Law School. He also completed a doctorate in legal philosophy at Oxford University and spent several years in private practice.