(AP) – The White House is planning a major outreach effort to get Neil Gorsuch confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says the White House is planning a series of briefings with House and Senate staff about Trump’s pick.

Gorsuch is expected to travel Wednesday to Capitol Hill to begin meetings with lawmakers, including Senate Judiciary Committee members.

Spicer says the White House is “going to work really, really hard” to get Trump’s pick confirmed. </s> WASHINGTON — Surrounded by family and his future colleagues, Neil Gorsuch has taken the first of two oaths as he prepares to take his place as the 113th justice of the Supreme Court.

The 49-year-old appeals court judge from Colorado is being sworn in Monday after a bruising fight that saw Republicans change the rules for approving Supreme Court picks – over the fierce objection of Democrats.

The first ceremony took place privately in the Justices’ Conference Room, with Chief Justice John Roberts administering the oath required by the Constitution.

That will be followed by a public White House ceremony, where Justice Anthony Kennedy is to administer the oath set by federal law. President Donald Trump will attend the swearing-in at the Rose Garden.

Gorsuch will be seated just in time to hear one of the biggest cases of the term — a religious rights dispute over a Missouri law that bars churches from receiving public funds for general aid programs. </s> President Donald Trump has nominated federal appeals judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

The 49-year-old Gorsuch has served on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver since 2006, after being appointed by President George W. Bush. He once worked at the Supreme Court as a law clerk.

If approved by the Senate, Gorsuch would take the seat left vacant since Justice Antonin Scalia died last year. Republicans refused to consider President Barack Obama's nominee for the seat, saying the choice should go Obama's successor.

He would be the youngest justice since Clarence Thomas joined the court in 1991 at age 43.

Trump made the announcement Tuesday in a prime-time address from the White House. </s> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump reveled in the biggest political victory of his presidency at a White House ceremony on Monday in which his Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch was sworn in, poised to make an instant impact on a court once again dominated by conservatives.

Trump was able to fulfill a top campaign promise when the Republican-led U.S. Senate voted to confirm the conservative Colorado-based federal appeals court judge to the lifetime job on Friday despite vehement Democratic opposition.

With Gorsuch aboard, the court has five conservative justices and four liberals, a majority that could be pivotal in deciding a range of issues including abortion, gun control, the death penalty, presidential powers, political spending, environmental regulation and religious rights.

Standing in the White House Rose Garden under bright sunshine on a warm spring day, Trump tied the occasion to the political aims of his administration, as the eight other members of the nation’s highest court looked on.

“Together we are in a process of reviewing and renewing and also rebuilding our country,” Trump told an audience that included conservative activists and administration officials. “A new optimism is sweeping across our land and a new faith in America is filling our hearts and lifting our sights.”

Gorsuch filled a vacancy that had lingered for nearly 14 months after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s February 2016 death. Gorsuch’s judicial oath was administered by Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch worked as a clerk as a young lawyer. Gorsuch becomes the first justice to serve alongside a former boss.

Trump made a point of thanking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his role in winning confirmation. McConnell last week led the effort to change long-standing Senate rules in order to end a Democratic blockade of Gorsuch’s nomination. Under McConnell’s leadership, the Senate last year refused to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Scalia, an appointment that would have tilted the court to the left for the first time in decades.

“I’ve always heard that the most important thing that a president of the United States does is appoint people, hopefully great people like this appointment, to the United States Supreme Court,” Trump said.

“He will decide cases not based on his personal preferences but based on a fair and objective reading of the law,” Trump said of Gorsuch.

Judge Neil Gorsuch (L) is sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court by the senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy (not pictured), as U.S. President Donald J. Trump (C) watches with Louise Gorsuch in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump pledged to pick a justice who would overturn the landmark 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Gorsuch declined to answer about whether Roe v. Wade and other important court precedents were properly decided.

‘FAITHFUL SERVANT’

“To the American people, I am humbled by the trust placed in me today,” Gorsuch said, with his wife Louise and the Republican president standing behind him. “I will never forget that to whom much is given, much will be expected. And I promise you that I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great nation.”

Those attending included liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called Trump “a faker” during the presidential campaign but later said she regretted the remark. Trump at the time called for her resignation, saying her “mind is shot.”

Scalia’s widow, Maureen, also attended.

Gorsuch earlier in the day took his separate constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, in a private ceremony at the Supreme Court with the other justices.

Gorsuch, 49, could serve for decades. Trump may be able to make further appointments to make the court even more solidly conservative, with three justices 78 or older: Ginsburg, 84; fellow liberal Stephen Breyer, 78; and conservative swing vote Kennedy, 80.

Gorsuch will take part in the court’s next round of oral arguments, starting on April 17. They include a religious rights case on April 19 in which a Missouri church is objecting to being denied state funds for a playground project due to a state ban on providing public money to religious organizations.

Gorsuch can be expected to have an immediate impact on the court. He takes part on Thursday in the justices’ private conference to decide which cases to take up.

Slideshow (13 Images)

Among cases up for discussion is one in which gun activists are seeking to expand gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public. Another is a bid to reinstate Republican-backed North Carolina voting restrictions that a lower court found were intended to suppress black voter turnout. A third concerns whether a Christian bakery owner can object on religious grounds to making a cake for a gay couple.

With Gorsuch sworn in, his new colleagues could decide to hear new arguments in their next term, starting in October, in cases argued during their current term in which they may have been split 4-4 and did not yet decide. </s> President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, a fast-rising conservative judge with a writer's flair, to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, a selection expected to spark a fierce fight with Democrats over a jurist who could shape America's legal landscape for decades to come.At 49, Gorsuch is the youngest Supreme Court nominee in a quarter century. He's distinguished himself on the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals with his clear, colloquial writing, advocacy for court review of government regulations, defense of religious freedom and skepticism toward law enforcement."Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline and has earned bipartisan support," Trump said, announcing the nomination in his first televised address from the White House.Gorsuch's nomination was cheered by conservatives wary of Trump's own fluid ideology. If confirmed by the Senate, he will fill the seat left vacant by the death last year of Antonin Scalia, long the right's most powerful voice on the high court.Some Democrats, still smarting over Trump's unexpected victory in the presidential election, have vowed to mount a vigorous challenge to nearly any nominee to what they view as the court's "stolen seat." President Barack Obama nominated U.S. Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland for the vacancy after Scalia's death, but Senate Republicans refused to consider the pick, saying the seat should be filled only after the November election.Trump's choice of Gorsuch marks perhaps the most significant decision of his young presidency, one with ramifications that could last long after he leaves office. After an uneven start to his presidency, including the chaotic rollout of a controversial refugee ban, Trump's selection of Gorsuch appeared to proceed with little drama.For some Republicans, the prospect of filling one or more Supreme Court seats over the next four years has helped ease their concerns about Trump's experience and temperament. Three justices are in their late 70s and early 80s, and a retirement would offer Trump the opportunity to cement conservative dominance of the court for many years.If confirmed, Gorsuch will restore the court to the conservative tilt it held with Scalia on the bench. But he is not expected to call into question high-profile rulings on abortion, gay marriage and other issues in which the court has been divided 5-4 in recent years.Gorsuch was among the 21 possible choices for the court Trump released during the campaign. Other finalists also came from that list, including Thomas Hardiman, who serves alongside Trump's sister on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and William Pryor, a federal appeals court judge and Alabama's attorney general from 1997 to 2004.Pryor's standing slipped in the lead up to the announcement, in part because his reputation as a staunch conservative seems likely to make him a rich target for Democratic senators in a confirmation hearing.Yet Gorsuch, too, is expected to face intense scrutiny from Democrats. Some liberals have demanded that Democrats block any Trump choice, underscoring the deep partisan discord surging through Washington."Now is not the time for business as usual," MoveOn.org's Ilya Sheyman said in a statement.Gorsuch is a Colorado native who earned his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in three years, then a law degree from Harvard. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Byron White, a fellow Coloradan, and Anthony Kennedy before earning a philosophy degree at Oxford University and working for a prominent Washington, D.C., law firm.He served for two years in President George W. Bush's Department of Justice before the president nominated him to the appeals court.Gorsuch has contended that courts give too much deference to government agencies' interpretations of statutes, a deference that stems from a Supreme Court ruling in a 1984 case. He sided with two groups that successfully challenged the Obama administration's requirements that employers provide health insurance that includes contraception.If Democrats decide to filibuster Gorsuch's nomination, his fate could rest in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump has encouraged McConnell to change the rules of the Senate and make it impossible to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee - a change known in the Senate as the "nuclear option."A conservative group already has announced plans to begin airing $2 million worth of ads in support of the nominee in Indiana, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota, four states that Trump won and in which Democrats will be defending their Senate seats in 2018.Chicago Kent College of Law Dean Harold Krent considers both judges conservative but mainstream jurists."The two leading candidates are both well-qualified, they're well-respected. They're quite conservative too, that's what you'd expect after this election," Krent said.Trump said last fall on television that, "The justices I'm going to appoint will be pro-life. They will have a conservative bent. They will be protecting the Second Amendment."Back then the long list of possible nominees included Judge Diane Sykes of Chicago's Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals."Judge Sykes is also conservative. She's also well-respected. She'll probably be considered f there's a further vacancy," Krent said.Krent said a conservative replacement for the vacancy will not change the court as we have known it for the past few years. It's the next Trump nominee, if he should have one, which could be a "game changer.""Then, a conservative appointment replacing, say, a Justice Ginsberg could destabilize the Court and send it rightward," he said.Gorsuch appeared on the list of of 21 possible choices that he made public during the campaign, and each has met with him to discuss the vacancy that arose when Antonin Scalia died nearly a year ago.Trump's pick will restore a general conservative tilt to the court but is not expected to call into question high-profile rulings on abortion, gay marriage and other issues in which the court has been divided 5-4 in recent years.That GOP effort outraged the White House and congressional Democrats, who have suggested they might seek to block any choice Trump makes. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has said Democrats will oppose any nominee outside the mainstream.White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that while Democrats may not like the "political or philosophical background" of the president's pick, "the criteria in terms of academia background, time on the bench, the expertise and criteria meets the intent of both Republicans and Democrats."If Democrats decide to filibuster, the fate of Trump's nominee could rest in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump has encouraged McConnell to change the rules of the Senate and make it impossible to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee - a change known in the Senate as the "nuclear option."A conservative group already has announced plans to begin airing $2 million worth of ads in support of the nominee in Indiana, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota, four states that Trump won and in which Democrats will be defending their Senate seats in 2018. </s> WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch, a fast-rising conservative judge with a writer’s flair, to the Supreme Court, setting up a fierce fight with Democrats over a jurist who could shape America’s legal landscape for decades to come.

At 49, Gorsuch is the youngest Supreme Court nominee in a quarter-century. He’s known on the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals for clear, colloquial writing, advocacy for court review of government regulations, defense of religious freedom and skepticism toward law enforcement.

“Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline and has earned bipartisan support,” Trump declared, announcing the nomination in his first televised prime-time address from the White House.

 Gorsuch’s nomination Tuesday was cheered by conservatives wary of Trump’s own fluid ideology. If confirmed by the Senate, he would fill the seat left vacant by the death last year of Antonin Scalia, long the right’s most powerful voice on the high court.

With Scalia’s wife, Maureen, sitting in the audience, Trump took care to praise the late justice. Gorsuch followed, calling Scalia a “lion of the law.”

Gorsuch thanked Trump for entrusting him with “a most solemn assignment.” Outlining his legal philosophy, he said: “It is the rule of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge.”

Some Democrats, still smarting over Trump’s unexpected victory in the presidential election, have vowed to mount a vigorous challenge to nearly any nominee to what they view as the court’s “stolen seat.” President Barack Obama nominated U.S. Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland for the vacancy after Scalia’s death, but Senate Republicans refused to consider the pick, saying the seat should be filled only after the November election.

Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer said he has “serious doubts” that Gorsuch is within what Democrats consider the legal mainstream, saying he “hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me skeptical that he can be a strong, independent justice on the court.”

Trump’s choice of Gorsuch marks perhaps the most significant decision of his young presidency, one with ramifications that could last long after he leaves office. After a reality television buildup to Tuesday’s announcement — including a senior Trump adviser saying more than one court candidate was heading to Washington ahead of the event— the actual reveal was traditional and drama-free.

For some Republicans, the prospect of filling one or more Supreme Court seats over the next four years has helped ease their concerns about Trump’s experience and temperament. Three justices are in their late 70s and early 80s, and a retirement would offer Trump the opportunity to cement conservative dominance of the court for many years.

Gorsuch would restore the court to the conservative tilt it held with Scalia on the bench. But he is not expected to call into question high-profile rulings on abortion, gay marriage and other issues in which the court has been divided 5-4 in recent years.

If confirmed, Gorsuch would join the court that is often the final arbiter for presidential policy. Justices upheld Obama’s signature health care law in 2012 and could eventually hear arguments over Trump’s controversial refugee and immigration executive order.

Gorsuch’s writings outside the court offer insight into his conservative leanings. He lashed out at liberals in a 2005 opinion piece for National Review, written before he became a federal judge.

“American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means for effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education,” he wrote.

Gorsuch has won praise from conservatives for his defense of religious freedom, including in a case involving the Hobby Lobby craft stores. He voted in favor of privately held for-profit secular corporations, and individuals who owned or controlled them, who raised religious objections to paying for contraception for women covered under their health plans.

The judge also has written opinions that question 30 years of Supreme Court rulings that allow federal agencies to interpret laws and regulations. Gorsuch has said that federal bureaucrats have been allowed to accumulate too much power at the expense of Congress and the courts.

Like Scalia, Gorsuch identifies himself as a judge who tries to decide cases by interpreting the Constitution and laws as they were understood when written. He also has raised questions about criminal laws in a way that resembles Scalia’s approach to criminal law.

University of Michigan law professor Richard Primus said Gorsuch “may be the closest thing the new generation of conservative judges has to Antonin Scalia.”

Gorsuch, like the other eight justices on the court, has an Ivy League law degree. The Colorado native earned his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in three years, then a law degree from Harvard. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Byron White, a fellow Coloradan, and Anthony Kennedy before earning a philosophy degree at Oxford University and working for a prominent Washington law firm.

He served for two years in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice before Bush nominated him to the appeals court. His mother was Anne Gorsuch Burford, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Reagan administration.

Gorsuch was among the 21 possible choices for the court Trump released during the campaign. Other finalists also came from that list, including Thomas Hardiman, who serves alongside Trump’s sister on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and William Pryor, a federal appeals court judge and Alabama’s attorney general from 1997 to 2004.

If Democrats decide to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination, his fate could rest in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump has encouraged McConnell to change the rules of the Senate and make it impossible to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee — a change known in the Senate as the “nuclear option.”

A conservative group already has announced plans to begin airing $2 million worth of ads in support of the nominee in Indiana, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota, four states that Trump won and in which Democrats will be defending their Senate seats in 2018. </s> U.S. Supreme Court nominee judge Neil Gorsuch smiles in reaction to a question as he testifies during the third day of his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. on March 22, 2017. (REUTERS/Jim Bourg/File Photo)

Neil Gorsuch, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, is due to be sworn in on Monday morning with a formal appearance at the White House, marking the biggest triumph so far for the new administration.

The lifetime appointment reinstates the nine-seat court’s 5-4 conservative majority, fulfilling an important Trump campaign promise.

“He will be a great Justice,” Trump said in a Twitter post on Saturday. “Very proud of him!”

Gorsuch, 49, was the youngest Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 picked Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time. Gorsuch could be expected to serve for decades, while Trump could make further appointments to the high court to make it even more solidly conservative because three of the eight justices are 78 or older.

Gorsuch, whom the Senate confirmed on Friday, will take his judicial oath at 11 a.m. EDT in a Rose Garden ceremony. It will be administered by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch clerked as a young lawyer.

Gorsuch will become the first justice to serve alongside a former boss.

At 9 a.m. EDT, Gorsuch is due to take his separate constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, in a private ceremony at the Supreme Court .

The Senate, which last year refused to consider Democratic former president Barack Obama’s nominee to the court, on Friday voted 54-45 to approve Colorado-based federal appeals court judge Gorsuch. The vote brought to an end to an almost 14-month battle over a vacancy created by the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016.

Once sworn in, Gorsuch can prepare for the next round of oral arguments, starting on April 17, at the court, whose current term ends in June.

He will also participate in the justices’ private conference on Thursday to consider taking new cases. Appeals are pending on expanding gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public, state voting restrictions that critics say are aimed at reducing minority turnout, and allowing business owners to object on religious grounds to providing gay couples certain services.

Gorsuch could also play a vital role in some cases on which his new colleagues may have been split 4-4 and therefore did not yet decide. Those cases may have to be reargued in the court’s next term, which starts in October. </s> “Judge Gorsuch has a superb intellect, an unparalleled legal education, and a commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its text. He will make an incredible Justice as soon as the Senate confirms him,” said the US president.

IMAGE: Donald Trump announces his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the US Supreme Court at the White House in Washington, DC. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

United States President Donald Trump has nominated conservative judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee, a selection which has sparked strong opposition from the Democrats.

Born and raised in Colorado, 49-year-old Gorsuch of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is the youngest Supreme Court nominee in a quarter century.

“I am proud to announce the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for Justice of the Supreme Court,” Trump said in a major announcement from the east Room of the White House on Tuesday.

Gorsuch attended ColumbiaUniversity and HarvardLawSchool. After graduating with honours, he received his doctorate from OxfordUniversity as a Marshall Scholar.

“This has been the most transparent and most important Supreme Court selection process in the history of our country and I wanted the American people to have a voice in this nomination,” Trump said.

“Judge Gorsuch has a superb intellect, an unparalleled legal education, and a commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its text. He will make an incredible Justice as soon as the Senate confirms him,” Trump said, making his first nomination to the Supreme Court.

In 2006, the then President George W Bush nominated him for the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and he was confirmed by voice vote without objection.

“I am honoured and humbled to receive this nomination. I look forward to meeting with Senators over the coming weeks as we begin this process,” Gorsuch said.

In a live prime time address to the nation from the East Room in selecting Gorsuch, Trump said he was fulfilling his promise to select someone who loves the Constitution and respects laws and will interpret them as written.

“This may be the most transparent judicial selection process in history. Months ago as a candidate, I publicly presented a list of brilliant and accomplished people to the American electorate and pledged to make my choice from among that list. Millions of voters said this was the single most important issue to them when they voted for me for president,” he said.

“I am a man of my word. I will do as I say, something that the American people have been asking for from Washington for a very, very long time. The qualifications of Judge Gorsuch are beyond dispute. He is the man of our country and a man who our country really needs and needs badly to ensure the rule of law and the rule of justice,” Trump said.

Noting that he would like to thank Senate leadership, Trump said he hoped both Democrats and Republicans can come together for once for the good of the country.

Gorsuch enjoys fishing, hiking, and skiing. He and his wife care for animals, including a horse, in the small barn at their home. As a young man, he delivered papers and worked as a front desk clerk at a Howard Johnson to make extra money.

“I pledge that if I am confirmed I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country,” Gorsuch said in his remarks.

The Supreme Court’s work is vital not just to a region of the country, but to the whole, vital to the protection of the people’s liberties under law and to the continuity of our Constitution, the greatest charter of human liberty the world has ever known, he said.

IMAGE:Neil Gorsuch stands with his wife Marie Louise as U.S. President Donald Trump announces his nomination. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

House Speaker Paul Ryan said in Gorsuch, Trump had fulfilled his pledge to nominate a judge who has demonstrated loyalty to the Constitution and strong commitment to life.

“He is a phenomenal nominee for the Supreme Court. His belief in judicial restraint will serve the Court and the country very well,” he said.

“Congress and the American people don’t want a liberal Supreme Court justice or a conservative Supreme Court justice. We want a justice who will decide cases based on the law and the Constitution as they are written. Neil Gorsuch appears to fit that mould,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The Democrats voiced their opposition to the nominee.

“Given his record, I have very serious doubts about Judge Gorsuch’s ability to meet this standard. Judge Gorsuch has repeatedly sided with corporations over working people, demonstrated a hostility toward women’s rights, and most troubling, hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me sceptical that he can be a strong, independent Justice on the Court,” said Senate Minority Leader Senator Charles Schumer.

“Make no mistake, Senate Democrats will not simply allow but require an exhaustive, robust, and comprehensive debate on Judge Gorsuch’s fitness to be a Supreme Court Justice,” he said, adding that the Senate must insist upon 60-votes for any Supreme Court nominee, a bar that was met by each of President Obama’s nominees.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said he had hoped that Trump would work in a bipartisan way to pick a mainstream nominee like Merrick Garland and bring the country together.

“Instead, he outsourced this process to far-right interest groups. This is no way to treat a co-equal branch of government, or to protect the independence of our Federal judiciary,” he said.

“We need a Supreme Court justice who will honour established precedent, including the constitutional right to privacy and Roe v Wade. That Justice is not Neil Gorsuch,” said Vicki Saporta president and CEO of National Abortion Federation. </s> WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork/AP) — With a divisive confirmation process behind him, Judge Neil Gorsuch is about to take his place as the newest Supreme Court justice.

The 49-year-old appeals court judge from Colorado is to be sworn in Monday after a bruising fight that saw Republicans change the rules for approving Supreme Court picks over the fierce objection of Democrats.

First up is a private ceremony in the high court’s Justices’ Conference Room, with Chief Justice John Roberts administering the oath prescribed by the Constitution. That will be followed by a public ceremony at the White House, where Justice Anthony Kennedy is to administer the oath.

Gorsuch, who once clerked for Kennedy, will be the first member of the court to serve alongside his former boss. He replaces the late Justice Antonin Scalia, part of the court’s conservative wing for nearly three decades before he died unexpectedly in February 2016.

In nominating Gorsuch, President Donald Trump said he fulfilled a campaign pledge to pick someone in the mold of Scalia.

During 11 years on the federal appeals court in Denver, Gorsuch mirrored Scalia’s originalist approach to the law, interpreting the Constitution according to the meaning understood by those who drafted it. Like Scalia, he is a gifted writer with a flair for turning legal jargon into plain language people can understand.

Gorsuch will be seated just in time to hear one of the biggest cases of the term: a religious rights dispute over a Missouri law that bars churches from receiving public funds for general aid programs.

His 66-day confirmation process was swift, but bitterly divisive. It saw Senate Republicans trigger the “nuclear option” to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold for all future high court nominees. The change allowed the Senate to hold a final vote with a simple majority.

Most Democrats refused to support Gorsuch because they were still seething over the Republican blockade last year of President Barack Obama’s pick for the same seat, Merrick Garland. Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing for Garland, saying a high court replacement should be up to the next president.

The White House swearing-in ceremony is a departure from recent history. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were both sworn in publicly at the Supreme Court. Former Justice John Paul Stevens has argued that holding the public ceremony at the court helps drive home the justice’s independence from the White House.
President Donald Trump's pick for the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, is sworn in at the White House.