Neil Gorsuch should be confirmed swiftly by the United States Senate.
Gorsuch, 49, has served on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals since 2006, and with degrees from Columbia, Harvard and Oxford, he is eminently qualified to serve on the nation’s highest court. However, his nomination has already faced some strong opposition from Senate Democrats, 8 of whom must support Gorsuch in order for him to be confirmed.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, announced their opposition to Gorsuch within hours of his nomination. Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, has described this as a “stolen seat” and has vowed to oppose any Trump nominee who is not Judge Merrick Garland, whom then-President Barack Obama appointed to fill the vacancy shortly after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February.
The seat does not belong to Merrick Garland, who was also well qualified and by all accounts respectable and relatively moderate. The Senate withheld its consent on his nomination. The Republican-controlled Senate did not wish to confirm Garland because he would’ve shaken up the ideological balance of the court because he was far more liberal than Scalia.
No formal vote was taken on the nomination, in order to prevent Republican incumbents in tough reelection fights from having to be held accountable for their personal opposition to Garland. While this political maneuver may have further politicized the process of confirming Supreme Court justices, it did not begin the phenomenon. It was not until 1987 when a Democrat-controlled Senate refused to confirm the highly qualified Robert Bork strictly on ideological grounds by a vote of 43-42 that the confirmation process became politicized.
The unsuccessful nomination of Douglas Ginsburg to fill the same seat and the extremely contentious confirmation fight over Clarence Thomas in 1990 further politicized the process.
President Trump also has a clear mandate to fill this vacancy. The prospect of Hillary Clinton filling the seat once occupied by the conservative icon Scalia drove many conservatives and particularly evangelicals to support Trump in the election despite having large reservations about him being the Republican nominee.
Trump published a list of potential picks for the supreme court during the campaign, and the list included Neil Gorsuch. Trump was also given a Republican-controlled Senate to confirm his nominee. An attempt by the minority party in the Senate to thwart such a clear democratic mandate should be very troubling to all Americans.
The Senate majority leader has the ability to change the Senate rules to allow justices to be confirmed by a simple majority vote, which is known as the nuclear option. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, should not have to take this step. The ability to filibuster political appointees who serve lifelong terms is an important power for Senate minorities to have. This power ensures that presidents only appoint qualified individuals to the federal bench.
However, if it is clear Democrats have no intention to confirm anyone appointed to the supreme court by Trump, the nuclear option should be considered. In order to preserve this important power, Senate Democrats must allow the eminently qualified Gorsuch to be confirmed.
