Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, explained

[rug]

Updated by Dylan Matthews
Jan 31, 2017, 8:04pm EST

Donald Trump has selected Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old federal appeals court judge on the 10th Circuit, as his choice to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court.

Gorsuch is a widely acclaimed jurist, a favorite of conservatives and libertarians but also very respected by liberal colleagues. He’s exactly the kind of elite, educated figure who's traditionally made it onto the Court. His mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, was Ronald Reagan's director of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1981 to 1983. A graduate of Columbia (where he was a Truman scholar), Oxford (where he got a doctorate under the acclaimed Catholic legal philosopher John Finnis as a Marshall scholar), and Harvard Law (which five other members of the Court attended), Gorsuch clerked on the DC Circuit and then for both Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy before working at a boutique litigation firm in Washington, DC, for 10 years and doing a brief stint in the George W. Bush Justice Department.

So it’s perhaps not surprising that when Bush appointed to him to the 10th Circuit — which covers much of the Mountain West, including Gorsuch's home state of Colorado — at the age of 38, he was easily confirmed by voice vote.

This time should be different. Gorsuch is more outspoken and forthright in his positions than your typical Supreme Court aspirant, providing a lot of fodder for any opponents. A Democratic filibuster motivated by Republicans’ successful obstruction of President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, for this same seat last year is a certainty for any nominee, and if Democrats conclude that Gorsuch’s views on issues like the right to life and religious liberty are outside the mainstream, the filibuster might have a chance of success.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/31/14450024/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court

[No Vested Interest]

1. If Gorsuch is affirmed as a Supreme Court Justice, there would finally

be a Protestant on the Court.
(Although he's been influenced along the way by Catholic - Jesuit schooling).

[rug]

2. That will make 5 who are Catholic, 3 who are Jewish, and one Episcopalian.

[struggle4progress]

3. His mother as Reagan's EPA director famously tried to ensure we'd all get our daily lead

[rug]

4. His mother? Jesus, that explains a lot.