Gorsuch well suited for highest court
Published February 3, 2017
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, February 3, 2017.
Republican President Trump has nominated an intellectual jurist and a good man to succeed the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Senate Democrats would do well to drop their opposition. They’re within their rights. But they, and the country, could do a lot worse than Judge Neil Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
Some Senate Democrats note that their Republican counterparts would not even consider Judge Merrick Garland to replace Scalia, who died last February. Their lack of consideration was wrong. But, as Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said this week, two wrongs don’t make a right.
We need to move forward. And Gorsuch would likely make a fine justice. He is indeed a conservative and an originalist on constitutional interpretation in the tradition of Scalia. But he is also, by most accounts, a strong and fair thinker, eminently qualified, probably more fair than the rest on Trump’s list.
Gorsuch was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate for his current seat on the court of appeals, including by then-Sen. Obama. Gorsuch was educated at Columbia University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy, worked for the Justice Department for a year and spent 10 years in private practice.
As Robert P. George, a Princeton professor and friend of Gorsuch, noted in a Washington Post column that we ran Thursday:
Gorsuch’s opinions are marked by analytical depth and precision and remarkably lucid writing. In selecting Gorsuch, President Trump has without question fulfilled his pledge to appoint a justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia — a conservative intellectual leader.. But one respect in which Gorsuch is unlike Scalia is that he is not fiery or pugnacious …
Of course, most people are interested above all in how he is likely to vote on hot-button issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, campaign finance reform and religious freedom. In the confirmation hearings, he will no doubt do what another friend of mine, Justice Elena Kagan, did and basically refuse to discuss these issues on the grounds that they are likely to come before him. I expect what just about everyone else expects: Gorsuch, who greatly admired Scalia, thinks about the constitutional issues in these areas pretty much the same way Scalia did … But he is not dogmatic …
If Democrats are looking for a point of vulnerability in either Gorsuch’s integrity or impartiality, they won’t find it. He is basically a Boy Scout. He’s … a man of probity who holds himself to the highest ethical standards and he will bring religious diversity to a Court that is entirely Catholic and Jewish: He’s an Episcopalian.
This judge, if confirmed for our land’s highest court, might just pleasantly surprise both Democrats and Republicans. We urge Senate Democrats to fairly hear him out.
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