President Trump has chosen Neil Gorsuch, a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, to fill the long-vacant Supreme Court seat left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The decision is already earning Trump high marks among many constitutional conservatives, including from numerous politicians and members of the media who have long questioned Trump’s commitment to conservative ideals.
Erick Erickson, a longtime critic of Trump, says in an article posted on his political commentary site the Resurgent, “Judge Gorsuch is the one nominee who matches Antonin Scalia’s intellectual pedigree and will unite all the factions within the Republican Party. This is a very wise move by President Trump. Even his most ardent critics on the right will have to commend President Trump for this nomination. It is rock solid.”
Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at National Review, one of the leaders in the anti-Trump conservative movement, wrote Gorsuch is a “textualist and an originalist … in the vein of Antonin Scalia.”
A graduate of Columbia University, Harvard Law School and Oxford, Gorsuch has an unrivaled intellect and an unwavering commitment to numerous traditional conservative causes. He opposes assisted-suicide laws; is a strong supporter of religious freedom, as evidenced by his decision to side with the dissent in Little Sisters v. Burwell (2015); and he has said he’s pro-life, although he has never ruled in high-profile abortion case.
What really set Gorsuch apart from Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, another strong conservative who was widely reported to be among Trump’s top three finalists for the seat, is his vocal opposition to “Chevron deference,” a legal principle that grants authority to government agencies when existing law is ambiguous. Scalia himself believed Chevron deference was valid if applied narrowly, but Gorsuch has said federal agencies should have very limited power when it comes to interpreting laws.
Ponnuru highlights this point in his article praising the selection: “[Gorsuch] may be more willing than Scalia was to rein in administrative agencies. He has called into question Supreme Court precedents that command judicial deference to the legal interpretations of those agencies. He has been skeptical, as well, of agencies that purport to apply regulations retroactively.”
This view fits perfectly with Trump’s stated commitment to rein in federal regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and to promote pro-business, pro-growth economic policies. If Gorsuch is confirmed by the Senate, he would surely become one of the champions of limiting the growing power of the regulatory state in Washington, D.C.
Another point in Gorsuch’s favor is that he’s avoided making inflammatory or particularly controversial comments, something Senate Democrats, many of whom have already committed to blocking any pick made by Trump, would have been able to use to delay a confirmation.
The same cannot be said of Pryor, who wrote in a 2003 supporting brief about a Texas law criminalizing sexual relations between two people of the same sex, “The states should not be required to accept, as a matter of constitutional doctrine, that homosexual activity is harmless and does not expose both the individual and the public to deleterious spiritual and physical consequences.”
As an added bonus, Gorsuch is only 49 years old, which would make him the youngest current justice on the Supreme Court. The two closest in age to Gorsuch would be liberal Obama-appointee Justice Elena Kagan, 56, and center-right George W. Bush-appointee Justice John Roberts, 62. Three justices — Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — are at least 78 years old.
Gorsuch is as close to a sure-thing for constitutional conservatives as it can get, and he’s the sort of judge a strong conservative like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would have appointed had he been elected. If you support liberty and an originalist view of the Constitution, this pick is a home run worthy of tremendous praise from all segments within the conservative movement and Republican Party.
Justin Haskins is (@TheNewRevere) a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an executive editor at The Heartland Institute.
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