Trump’s Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch may be most traditional choice he’s made

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President Donald Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court Tuesday evening was unveiled with show-business flair and reality-show mystery, but amounted to a cloistered whisper compared with the chaotic shouts that the new President has hurled across the American political landscape since his inauguration less than two weeks ago.

And though the President's selection came with a publicist's bark – "You won't want to miss it!" the administration said in what surely was the first White House press release to employ an exclamation mark in a sentence involving the Supreme Court – Judge Gorsuch is a relatively conventional choice reached in a conventional way.

Vetted by The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, both influential in conservative circles since the Ronald Reagan era of the 1980s, and so uncontroversial that he was approved on a voice vote when his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals came before the Senate, Judge Gorsuch is perhaps the most traditional personnel choice Mr. Trump has made since he was elected in November.

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"For a President who breaks norms every single hour of the day, he used quite a traditional process to reach this decision," said Dan Urman, director of the master's program at the Northeastern University Law School. "This is probably the most normal thing Trump has done."

Judge Gorsuch, 49, from a prominent Colorado political family, is a conservative in the mould of Antonin Scalia, whose death last year created this opening, and his confirmation would restore the 5-4 advantage conservatives held when Justice Scalia, whom Judge Gorsuch described in the East Room ceremony as a "lion of the law," sat on the bench.

The President's nominee spoke of what he described as "the most solemn assignment" and said he was "acutely aware of my own imperfections." Mr. Trump praised Judge Gorsuch for his "outstanding legal skills" and his "brilliant mind," and indeed the judge is known for his intellectual depth and sense of fairness – and for an open mind on difficult issues, which may trouble activists and lawmakers on the right who feel that earlier selections by Republican presidents have strayed from the conservative line.

Justice David Souter, appointed by president George H.W. Bush, for example, did not vote to overturn abortion rights and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., appointed by president George W. Bush, did not vote to overturn Obamacare.

But Judge Gorsuch regards himself as an "originalist," the line of thinking that applies contemporary issues to the test of the intentions of the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution in 1787 – another tie to Justice Scalia, whose intellectual acuity and brilliant writing style were a vital part of the character of the high court for three decades.

"If you are looking for someone who matches Scalia's ability with a pen, Gorsuch is the natural choice," Mr. Urman said. "His opinions are clear, they sparkle and they are entertaining. I read legal decisions for a living, and his are a joy." That profile – plus Judge Gorsuch's position that Obamacare requirements that insurers underwrite contraceptives violated religious freedoms – will only heighten the resistance to a Trump high-court nominee that Democratic senators have planned for weeks, a retaliatory measure in response to Republican refusal for nearly a year even to consider Merrick Garland, former president Barack Obama's selection for the high court.

If Judge Gorsuch is confirmed – and he is regarded as a far more difficult confirmation candidate than his chief rival for the position, Judge Thomas Hardiman of Pittsburgh – he would fit comfortably into a court that is populated exclusively by men and women holding an Ivy League degree. Judge Gorsuch is a graduate of both Columbia University and the Harvard Law School, where Mr. Obama was his classmate.

Though Judge Gorsuch supports the death penalty and is regarded as a skeptic of the regulatory state, in style this nomination goes against many of the impulses of Mr. Trump, who has favoured outsiders and iconoclasts in selections for other positions, including his choice of Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama as attorney-general.

The son of the Reagan-era Environmental Protection Agency administrator, the late Anne Gorsuch Burford, Judge Gorsuch attended high school at the tony Georgetown Day School and earned a doctorate at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar. He clerked at the Supreme Court and would be the first to serve as a colleague to a justice with whom he worked as a clerk, Justice Anthony Kennedy.

But that glittery résumé will not soften the hearts of Democrats and Judge Gorsuch will not glide to confirmation, and indeed some Democrats are vowing to replicate the Republicans' refusal even to hold hearings on a presidential nomination to the court. Liberal-leaning activist groups also are mobilized. "Activists will make clear that the Senate cannot confirm a nominee who will simply be a rubber stamp for President Trump's anti-constitutional efforts that betray American values," the Alliance for Justice said in a statement.

But the Republicans control the Senate and, by virtue of that power, have an 11-to-9 advantage in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the Gorsuch hearings will be held and where, at their conclusion, the lawmakers will vote whether to move the nomination to the Senate floor. The Democrats hoping to confirm Judge Garland had no such parliamentary advantage nor the leverage that comes with it.