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Judge Neil Gorsuch Analysis

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Judge Neil Gorsuch is President Donald Trump's choice to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated a year ago by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch graduated from Columbia, Harvard and Oxford, clerked for two Supreme Court justices and did a stint at the Department of Justice. He attended Harvard Law with former President of the United States Barack Obama. Since 2006, he has served on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Colorado. Gorsuch is a textualist or a person who adheres strictly to a text. He also supports the legal philosophy of “originalism,” popularized by late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Gorsuch would replace on the court, which holds that the constitution should be interpreted based on the framers’ beliefs at the time it was written. Gorsuch said in a speech at Case Western …show more content…

Early on it was emphasized that the hearings would remain sharply divided along party lines, with each senator accusing the opposing side of taking a position on an issue strictly because it is politically advantageous for them to do so. Senator Orrin Hatch, a republican from Utah, argued that the Senate owes a president discretion in picking his judicial nominees and pointed out that Gorsuch had received the highest rating possible from the American Bar Association, the "gold standard" in vetting judicial nominees. He then continued to criticize democrats for wanting Gorsuch to outline how he would vote on certain cases, saying that to them, "judicial independence requires he be beholden to them and their political agenda" on issues like abortion. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, pointed out that he had voted to confirm President Obama's two Supreme Court nominees, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, because they were qualified for the job and not because he agreed with their politics and urged his Democratic colleagues to give Gorsuch the same

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