Trump has officially announced his top pick for the Supreme Court’s empty seat and that man is Neil Gorsuch.  Gorsuch is the youngest justice to be nominated for one of the most respected positions in the American Judicial branch at only 49 years old.  He is not an overly surprising choice considering his background.  His education includes degrees from Columbia, Harvard, and Oxford. His professional career work includes when he was a law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, law clerk for the Supreme Court of the Unites States, a partner and eventually an associate for Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans, & Figel, an associate attorney general for the United States Department of Justice, and currently as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. While his past has been impressive the important thing for many Americans is how he will be in the future due in the position of a Supreme Court Justice, which is for life.

Gorsuch’s views on high profile issues in the United States is the main concern for many Americans. His direction view on abortion is not concrete. In his book, “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” he writes, “the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.” This would make one to believe that since he is against assisted suicide and euthanasia then he would be against abortion, however, he has also never entered any ruling regarding abortion so the evidence of him swinging one way or another is light. Yet, Trump promised to nominate a justice with a pro-life view so it is safe to assume that Gorsuch is more pro-life than pro-choice.  Abortion is not the only issue that leaves people uncertain which way Gorsuch would vote; Immigration has a similar blurred line. In 2016, Gorsuch approved an undocumented person’s appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals after the person was denied lawful residency.  He is strongly against federal agencies taking the law into their own hands and interpreting it themselves.

The spot that Gorsuch could fill belonged to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan and passed away February 2016. Before Scalia died the Supreme Court consisted of 3 liberals, 2 moderates, and 4 conservatives, and it was balanced in the way that the Court was not one-sided. Gorsuch is a strong conservative just like Scalia before him and would not be tipping the scale in any big way. However, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bayer Ginsberg, and Anthony Kennedy are all over the age of 80 and could possibly retire or fall to illness in the next 4 years giving Republican President Donald Trump the opportunity to have a conservative majority Supreme Court to push his party’s agenda.

The fear of many Republicans rooting for Gorsuch’s conformation is that the Democrats will block him from the Supreme Court.  The fear comes from the fact that the Republican’s would not vote on whether or not to vote on President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.  According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 49 percent of Americans would want to see Gorsuch confirmed and 36 percent would want to see him denied in the Senate.  On a political level, 84 percent of Republicans want Gorsuch to be confirmed with 61 percent of Democrats wanting him denied.  We saw in the 2016 presidential election polls change and can be wrong. The conformation or dismissal of Neil Gorsuch will not be decided until mid-March.