The Art of the Deal : Neil Gorsuch Confirmed by Senate as Supreme Court Justice

[rmstock]

For Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to win Senate confirmation as an associate justice, he had to learn how to say nothing much at all. By SUSAN JOAN ARCHER and ADAM LIPTAK on Publish Date April 7, 2017. Photo by Al Drago/The New York Times
POLITICS
Neil Gorsuch Confirmed by Senate as Supreme Court Justice
By ADAM LIPTAK and MATT FLEGENHEIMERAPRIL 7, 2017
www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court.html?_r=0

  "WASHINGTON — Judge Neil M. Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate on
   Friday to become the 113th justice of the Supreme Court, capping a
   political brawl that lasted for more than a year and tested
   constitutional norms inside the Capitol's fraying upper chamber.
   
   The moment was a triumph for President Trump, whose campaign appeal to
   reluctant Republicans last year rested in large part on his pledge to
   appoint another committed conservative to succeed Justice Antonin
   Scalia, who died in February 2016. However rocky the first months of
   his administration may have been, Mr. Trump now has a lasting legacy:
   Judge Gorsuch, 49, could serve on the court for 30 years or more.
   
   "As a deep believer in the rule of law, Judge Gorsuch will serve the
   American people with distinction as he continues to faithfully and
   vigorously defend our Constitution," the president said.
   
   The final tally was 54-45 in favor of confirmation.
   
   The confirmation was also a vindication of the bare-knuckled strategy
   of Senate Republicans, who refused even to consider President Barack
   Obama's Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick B. Garland, saying the choice
   of the next justice should belong to the next president.
   
   Yet the bruising confrontation has left the Senate a changed place.
   Friday's vote was possible only after the Senate discarded longstanding
   rules meant to ensure mature deliberation and bipartisan cooperation in
   considering Supreme Court nominees. On Thursday, after Democrats waged
   a filibuster against Judge Gorsuch, denying him the 60 votes required
   to advance to a final vote, Republicans invoked the so-called nuclear
   option: lowering the threshold on Supreme Court nominations to a simple
   majority vote.
   
   The confirmation saga did not help the reputation of the Supreme Court,
   either. The justices say politics plays no role in their work, but the
   public heard an unrelentingly different story over the last year, with
   politicians, pundits and well-financed outside groups insisting that a
   Democratic nominee would rule differently from a Republican one.
   
   Judge Gorsuch possesses the credentials typical of the modern Supreme
   Court justice. He is a graduate of Columbia, Harvard and Oxford, served
   as a Supreme Court law clerk and worked as a lawyer at a prestigious
   Washington law firm and at the Justice Department. He joined the United
   States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, in 2006, where
   he was widely admired as a fine judicial stylist.
   
   During 20 hours of questioning from senators during his confirmation
   hearings last month, Judge Gorsuch said almost nothing of substance. He
   presented himself as a folksy servant of neutral legal principles, and
   senators had little success in eliciting anything but canned answers.
   
   But neither side harbored any doubts, based on the judge's opinions,
   other writings and the president who nominated him, that Judge Gorsuch
   would be a reliable conservative committed to following the original
   understanding of those who drafted and ratified the Constitution.
   
   Judge Gorsuch will be sworn in on Monday, in two ceremonies: a private
   session at the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
   will preside, and a public event at the White House, where Justice
   Anthony M. Kennedy will administer a second oath.
   
   
   Vice President Mike Pence presided over the final vote on Judge
   Gorsuch's nomination, though his tie-breaking vote was not necessary.
   Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
   
   A week from Monday, he will hear his first arguments. A ninth chair,
   absent since the spring of 2016, will be waiting for him.
   
   He is not a stranger to the court, having served as a law clerk in 1993
   and 1994 to Justice Byron R. White, who died in 2002, and Justice
   Kennedy, who continues to hold the crucial vote in many closely divided
   cases.
   
   The court has been short-handed since Justice Scalia's death on Feb.
   13, 2016. Within hours, the Republican majority leader, Senator Mitch
   McConnell of Kentucky, said the seat would not be filled until a new
   administration came to power.
   
   It was perhaps the most audacious escalation in a series of
   precedent-busting Senate skirmishes in recent decades — tracing from
   Democratic opposition to Judge Robert H. Bork and Justice Clarence
   Thomas to the wide-scale use of the filibuster by Republicans under Mr.
   Obama.
   
   In an interview on Friday, Mr. McConnell said that he viewed the
   elevation of Judge Gorsuch as quite likely the most consequential
   accomplishment of his career. He also played down the long-term
   consequences of the recent rancor.
   
   [Video]
   Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump's choice for Supreme Court
   justice, adheres to originalism, a judicial approach that would deeply
   affect how he would make decisions from the bench. By NEETI UPADHYE and
   DAVE HORN on Publish Date March 22, 2017. Photo by Eric Thayer for The
   New York Times. Watch in Times Video »
   
   "Even though the rhetoric was kind of hot, frankly I think it was an
   act," he said of Democrats. "I don't think the well has been poisoned
   in any permanent way."
   
   Republicans have pinned any blame squarely on their opponents, citing
   Democratic blockades of judicial nominees under President George W.
   Bush and a rule change in 2013, when Democrats controlled the Senate,
   barring the filibuster for lower judgeships and executive branch
   nominees.
   
   But by design, that move left the Supreme Court filibuster untouched.
   Democrats have insisted that history remember who toppled this final
   emblem of minority party influence over confirmations.
   
   Over the last year, the eight-justice court has deadlocked a few times,
   but it has employed all kinds of strategies to avoid being completely
   hobbled. The justices have ducked some cases, issued vanishingly narrow
   decisions in others and slow-walked still others, waiting for a ninth
   justice to resolve what would otherwise be a 4-4 tie.
   
   On his third day on the bench, Justice Gorsuch will hear what may be
   the most important case of the term, a church-state clash with
   accessible facts and vast implications. On the Federal Court of Appeals
   in Denver, Judge Gorsuch was receptive to claims based on religious
   freedom, and he may make an early mark at the Supreme Court in that
   same area.
   
   
   Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, delayed the confirmation
   process to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's seat for more than a year
   after he died in February 2016. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
   
   There is good reason to think he may cast the decisive vote in the
   case, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, No. 15-577. The court has
   signaled that it feared a deadlock, taking an extraordinarily long time
   to schedule arguments.
   
   The justices agreed to hear the case in January 2016, when Justice
   Scalia was still alive. Indeed, he may have cast the fourth vote
   required to place the case on the court's docket.
   
   Other cases the court agreed to hear that day were argued and decided
   by the end of the last term, in June. But the court put the religion
   case on a very slow track, scheduling it for argument in the waning
   days of the current term.
   
   The case arose from a program in Missouri that helps schools use
   recycled tires to resurface playgrounds. State officials rejected an
   application from a Lutheran church that wanted to participate in the
   program for a playground at its preschool and day care center.
   
   The officials based their decision on the Missouri Constitution, which
   bars spending public money "in aid of any church."
   
   The church argued that the state's Constitution violated equal
   protection principles and the First Amendment's guarantee of free
   exercise of religion. Missouri said states should have leeway to decide
   for themselves whether and how much to help religious groups.
   
   One of Justice Gorsuch's earliest votes, then, will be in a case that
   could refashion the rules for how much state governments can keep their
   distance from religion.
   
   Should the court deadlock in cases it has already heard this term, as
   is possible in ones on a cross-border shooting and fair housing, it
   could order them reargued so that Justice Gorsuch might break the tie.
   In all likelihood, such rearguments would come in the court's next
   term, which starts in October.
   
   Among the cases the court has already agreed to take up next term are
   three about whether companies can use employment contracts to prohibit
   workers from banding together to take legal action over workplace
   issues. In the time before Judge Gorsuch's confirmation, Democrats
   expressed particular concern about his record on workers' rights,
   suggesting that his rulings tended to favor the privileged.
   
   Cases concerning arbitration clauses with class-action waivers in other
   settings have divided the court along ideological lines, with the
   conservative justices voting to uphold the provisions. Here, too,
   Justice Gorsuch may hold the decisive vote.
   
   The court will also hear a case on whether corporations can be sued for
   complicity in human rights abuses abroad, a question that has echoes of
   the court's 2010 decision in Citizens United, which allowed
   corporations to spend unlimited sums in elections.
   
   The court divided 5-4 along ideological lines in both Citizens United
   and an earlier human rights case, meaning that Justice Gorsuch's vote
   may once again prove crucial."

[rmstock]

never ever pick a fight with The Donald, cause nows it's gonna be : "Let the unmasked hearings begin"

[Astrangerinmyownland]

This is good in that it protects the 2nd Amendment for the moment.  Make no mistake, the Jews want to take the guns from White America.

[Christopher Marlowe]

Excellent news. I am very hopeful for his selection. You never know how they are going to vote, but Gorsuch did his graduate work under Finnis, so he is very deep in the natural law. That is very good news.