Gorsuch Confirmed as Senators Decide to Go Nuclear

On Monday, April 10th, Neil Gorsuch was sworn in as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch was confirmed after an intense and controversial battle between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. Gorsuch’s path to the Supreme Court was riddled with unprecedented difficulty, and monumental decisions.

The year before, then President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, following Justice Scalia’s death. A well experienced judge, Garland seemed like the perfect choice for the nomination. Senate Republicans under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, refused to hold a hearing and vote, citing that as a president serving his second and final term, in his final year, he should wait for the next president instead to choose a replacement for the vacant seat. Garland’s nomination finally expired when the 114th Congress ended, and all eyes laid on the newly elected President Donald Trump to nominate someone to replace Scalia.

Though a qualified judge and, under any other circumstances, a relatively uncontroversial pick, senate Democrats were determined to block his confirmation, due to the circumstances laid by the previous administration and Congress. After Gorsuch was nominated, senate Democrats threatened to filibuster the vote; that is, to talk and refuse to give up the floor of the Senate so a vote could not take place. Knowing that they would lose as the minority party, their only way to defeat the Republicans was to make sure the nomination died before making its way towards a vote. The only way for the Republicans to make their way around this issue was to use the “nuclear option.” The “nuclear option,” which meant rewriting senate procedure, was used only once before that, in 2013, when the senate voted 52-48 to make it so that a vote on cloture only required only a majority vote, instead of “three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn.” The senate Republicans then invoked the nuclear option a second time, making cloture for Supreme Court Justice nominees’ votes to, as well, require only a simple majority. On April 7th, the Senate voted in favor of Gorsuch’s confirmation 54-45, with all senators voting along party lines except for three democratic senators that voted yea, and a Georgian senator absent due to his recent surgery.

So, who is Neil Gorsuch, and what are his views? Gorsuch is, like the majority of his fellow conservatives, an advocate of judicial restraint, the idea that judges should not use their power to write laws, and should fetter their own power. He opposes, for instance, things such as the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which, bypassing the legislative process, declared gay marriage a right. He is a member of the Federalist Society, a society of conservatives seeking to reform the judicial system, along with current Justices Alito and Thomas. His views are generally along the same lines as his fellow Republicans; he is an advocate for state’s rights and religious rights, and also opposes euthanasia. Although only in his first week of serving, Gorsuch will soon be deciding his first cases on the Supreme Court. He has already made history with his confirmation, and it is certain that he will continue to do so from the bench.

Jeffrey '17