By: Max Bruns ~Advertising Editor~
President Donald Trump appointed U.S. federal judge Neil Gorsuch, 49, on Feb. 1 to fulfill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February of last year.
Gorsuch attended Harvard University with President Barack Obama and also graduated from Columbia and Oxford Universities. He was also a clerk for two Supreme Court justices and had a position in the Department of Justice.
Gorsuch was appointed by President Geroge W. Bush in 2006 as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Colorado.
Trump’s administration and conservatives alike have long looked at the prospect of making Gorsuch a Supreme Court Justice. He is a proponent of originalism and textualism, two tenants which hold that the constitution should be interpreted as the founding fathers would have interpreted it and that laws should be interpreted literally, without situational or precedential context.
He takes a hardline stance on the death penalty and antiterrorism efforts, and he widely interprets constitutional religious freedom.
In a recent news piece by NBC, Steve Kornacki pointed out that currently, Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas sit on the bench as conservatives, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor sit on the bench as liberals. Associate Justice Stephen Breyer is also regarded as a liberal.
Meanwhile, Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is largely regarded as a moderate, swing vote on the bench. Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch, if he is appointed, will even out the balance on the court, tying up the conservative and liberal bench picks four to four.
USA Today reported the balance on the bench will have a massive impact on the policies Trump intends to carry out.
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