Gorsuch confirmed by Senate
Rule changed to fill high court vacancy
WASHINGTON — Judge Neil M. Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate on Friday to become the 113th justice of the Supreme Court, capping a political brawl that lasted for more than a year and tested constitutional norms inside the Capitol’s fraying upper chamber.
The moment was a triumph for President Donald Trump, whose campaign appeal to reluctant Republicans last year rested in large part on his pledge to appoint another committed conservative to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. However rocky the first months of his administration may have been, Mr. Trump now has a lasting legacy: Judge Gorsuch, 49, could serve on the court for 30 years or more.
“As a deep believer in the rule of law, Judge Gorsuch will serve the American people with distinction as he continues to faithfully and vigorously defend our Constitution,” Mr. Trump said.
The final tally was 54-45 in favor of confirmation.
The confirmation was also a vindication of the bare-knuckled strategy of Senate Republicans, who refused even to consider President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick B. Garland, saying the choice of the next justice should belong to the next president.
Yet the bruising confrontation has left the Senate a changed place. Friday’s vote was possible only after the Senate discarded longstanding rules meant to ensure mature deliberation and bipartisan cooperation in considering Supreme Court nominees. On Thursday, after Democrats waged a filibuster against Judge Gorsuch, denying him the 60 votes required to advance to a final vote, Republicans invoked the so-called nuclear
option: lowering the threshold on Supreme Court nominations to a simple majority vote.
The confirmation saga did not help the reputation of the Supreme Court, either. The justices say politics plays no role in their work, but the public heard an unrelentingly different story over the past year, with politicians, pundits and well-financed outside groups insisting that a Democratic nominee would rule differently from a Republican one.
Judge Gorsuch has the credentials typical of a modern Supreme Court justice. He is a graduate of Columbia, Harvard and Oxford, served as a Supreme Court law clerk and worked as a lawyer at a prestigious Washington law firm and at the Justice Department. He joined the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, in 2006, where he was widely admired as a fine judicial stylist.
During 20 hours of questioning from senators during his confirmation hearings last month, Judge Gorsuch said almost nothing of substance. He presented himself as a folksy servant of neutral legal principles, and senators had little success in eliciting anything but canned answers.
But neither side harbored any doubts, based on the judge’s opinions, other writings and the president who nominated him, that Judge Gorsuch would be a reliable conservative committed to following the original understanding of those who drafted and ratified the Constitution.
Judge Gorsuch will be sworn in on Monday in two ceremonies: a private session at the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will preside, and a public event at the White House, where Justice Anthony M. Kennedy will administer a second oath.
A week from Monday, he will hear his first arguments. A ninth chair, absent since the spring of 2016, will be waiting for him.
He is not a stranger to the court, having served as a law clerk in 1993 and 1994 to Justice Byron R. White, who died in 2002, and Justice Kennedy, who continues to hold the crucial vote in many closely divided cases.
The court has been shorthanded since Scalia’s death on Feb. 13, 2016. Within hours after his death, the Republican majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, RKy., said the seat would not be filled until a new administration came to power.
It was perhaps the most audacious escalation in a series of precedent-busting Senate skirmishes in recent decades — tracing from Democratic opposition to Judge Robert H. Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas to the wide-scale use of the filibuster by Republicans under Mr. Obama.
In an interview Friday, Mr. McConnell said that he viewed the elevation of Judge Gorsuch as quite likely the most consequential accomplishment of his career. He also played down the long-term consequences of the recent rancor, saying “I don’t think the well has been poisoned in any permanent way.”
Republicans have pinned any blame on their opponents, citing Democratic blockades of judicial nominees under President George W. Bush and a rule change in 2013, when Democrats controlled the Senate, barring the filibuster for lower judgeships and executive branch nominees.
But that move left the Supreme Court filibuster untouched.