Senate confirms Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court

In the future, I will not be alone in wondering how many right-leaning 5-4 Supreme Court decisions with Justice Gorsuch in the majority would have been decided differently had Judge Garland been granted a hearing and confirmed. A fourth Senate Democrat, Michael Bennet from Gorsuch’s home state of Colorado, has said he will not join in the filibuster against Gorsuch but has not said how he will vote on confirmation.

But Gorsuch, known for the clarity of his legal writings, traced the roots of his success back to an even earlier source, Sister Mary Rose Margaret, the nun of whom he says: “She taught me how to read and she taught me how to diagram a sentence”. He will be officially sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts on April 10, followed by Justice Anthony Kennedy administering a judicial oath later that day, The Washington Post reports. Both introduced Gorsuch to their colleagues at the onset of his confirmation hearings.

But McConnell and some of his allies argued that they were simply returning to a time not long ago when judicial filibusters were rarely practiced and Supreme Court filibusters essentially unheard of.

The nine-seat court has operated with only eight justices after the death of conservative Antonin Scalia on February 13, 2016, with four liberals and four conservatives.

For many conservatives, Trump’s choice of Gorsuch made up for any number of other weaknesses in his candidacy and his administration.

The so-called travel ban has been halted in lower federal courts, but experts expect it will make its way to the Supreme Court.

Issues still before the court include religious freedom and gun rights.

Following a partisan battle and a year of contention following the death of Anton Scalia, the Senate has confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the United States. The number of these cases right now is unusually large.

Expressing confidence over his Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch to succeed as the US Supreme Court justice, President Donald Trump said he was proud of the former.

If Trump were able to nominate a majority of the court, it wouldn’t be the first time in history. Among the cases to be heard is a closely watched case testing whether a Missouri church school was wrongly denied state funding for a program to make playgrounds safer. The state maintains that it can not provide the funding without violating the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state. Then McConnell raised a point of order, suggesting that Supreme Court nominees should not be subjected to a 60-vote threshold but instead a simple majority in the 100-member Senate.

“Nobody was predicting Trump would get 90 percent of the Republican vote just like Mitt Romney did [in 2012, ] but he did”, McConnell said. The victory prompted high-fives between Majority Leader Sen. If that were to fall – and it certainly isn’t unthinkable – the Senate’s role as the deliberative body where things slow down will be over.

When a majority of Democrats voted to block Gorsuch’s confirmation, the Republicans began the procedure to apply the nuclear option Thursday.