BYRON WHITE, the first Coloradan to become an associate justice, saw 13 seats change hands during more than three decades on America’s Supreme Court. Each new justice represents not just a judge filling a chair, Mr White said, but a transformed court, a new court. Today, as a second justice from Colorado takes his seat, Neil Gorsuch is expected to return the Supreme Court to the 5-4 conservative majority that reigned for nearly five decades until Antonin Scalia died in February of last year. Before he is publicly feted at the White House and sworn in by his old boss, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Mr Gorsuch will be welcomed by his eight new colleagues in a private investiture ceremony at the court. After a brief stint in Chief Justice John Marshall’s historic 19th-century chair, Mr Gorsuch will slide into his own high-backed, leather-appointed chair on the far-right end of the bench.
Mr Gorsuch has been described by friends and critics alike as a judge in the mould of Mr Scalia, and his record reveals he is likely to vote in line with his predecessor on most issues. Several examinations of Mr Gorsuch’s decade as a judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals predict he may wind up somewhere to the right...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2oiJzCt
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