When President Donald Trump tapped Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, liberal and conservative legal analysts scoured his record and determined the Colorado appellate judge – described as brilliant, genial, ambitious and really, really conservative – would definitely move the court to the right. 

Judging by their reactions as the court adjourns for the summer, both the left and right agree: In roughly 11 weeks on the bench, Justice Gorsuch has exceeded that expectation.  Whether that's a good thing, however, depends on where one stands. 

Liberals, still seething that Senate Republicans blocked former President Barack Obama from replacing Scalia, say Gorsuch is further to the right than they expected, and far from the neutral jurist he claimed to be at his confirmation hearings.  They note he's formed an early alliance with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court's two most conservative members, and has already planted his flag in arch-conservative positions on the death penalty, consumer rights gun rights and religious freedom. 

"Although Neil Gorsuch took part only in the final few cases argued this term, his presence was enough to confirm Americans' fears, even before those case opinions were released," People for the American Way argues in its year-end Supreme Court report. 

Conservatives, however, can barely contain their glee: Gorsuch, they say, has been a strong conservative and a "textualist" sticking to literal interpretations of the Constitution.  What has them even more excited, however, is the probability that Trump could nominate at least one more justice like him, locking in an overwhelming, decades-long, 6-3 conservative majority. 

His early performance "says a lot about both what Gorsuch will be like as a Supreme Court Justice and what the President can be counted on to do as more High Court vacancies occur," according to a report by the conservative Committee for Justice. " Conservatives hoping for a solid conservative majority on the Court in the near future had good reason to cheer today." 

Neutral observers, however, have a warning when assessing the first two and a half months of the 49-year-old judge's lifetime tenure: Don't believe the hype. 

While the justice's conservative philosophy is, as expected, in the mold of Scalia, and he'll be a reliable vote for the right, Gorsuch hasn't transformed the court into a safe haven for the right.  Justice Anthony Kennedy, a relatively moderate conservative who occasionally tilts to the left on social issues, is still the court's lynchpin.  For now. 

"He has done a wonderful job and lived up to the expectations of those, like me, who supported him," says Georgetown University constitutional law professor Randy T. Barnett, adding that Gorsuch's first written majority opinion, in a case that determined the boundaries of consumer rights and debt collection, was decided on a unanimous vote. " Yes, he's been very promising, but he hasn't changed the game." 

Rick Hasen, a law professor at University of California-Irvine and an esteemed Supreme Court analyst, has a more nuanced view. 

"The early signs from Justice Neil Gorsuch , who joined the Court in April, show that he will hew to the late Justice Scalia's brand of jurisprudence, both in his conservatism and his boldness," Hasen, who produces the Election Law blog, wrote in an essay published Tuesday in The Los Angeles Times. 

"Setting aside his emerging alliance with Thomas and Alito, Gorsuch has already staked out some positions just for himself," Hasen wrote.  In the case of a man who witnessed his friend commit a murder but was convicted as an accomplice, Hasen wrote, Gorsuch "found himself disagreeing with Thomas and Roberts and siding with a criminal defendant. ' A plain legal error infects this judgment – a man was wrongly sentenced to 20 years in prison under a defunct statute,' Gorsuch wrote." 

Adam Feldman, who teaches law and political science at University of Southern California and writes the Empirical SCOTUS blog , says Gorsuch "is almost exactly as advertised," a brilliant legal thinker who hews to conservative orthodoxy. " It seems to me people are making more of a fuss right now [about Gorsuch's influence] than maybe necessary." 

Though the excitement on the right and dread on the left about the newest justice "is probably going to be warranted" in the long run, Feldman says, the conclusions reached about him so far seem "based on small assumptions and small moves.  There's an expectation that he will be this kind of furthest on the right of a conservative court.  I just don't see the evidence for that yet." 

Given the politics surrounding his nomination and confirmation, analysts say, it's not surprising that Gorsuch's first few months on the bench have been the equivalent of a Rorschach test for the right and left. 

The justice was nominated for the seat after Senate Republicans kept former President Barack Obama from replacing Scalia, who died in February 2016, and pulling the court to the left.  Then, when Senate Democrats objected to Gorsuch, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stripped them of the power to filibuster, ensuring Gorsuch would replace Scalia – but also preventing Democrats from stopping any of Trump's future nominees on the high court. 

With that as a backdrop, both progressive and conservative activists see Gorsuch as the template Trump will use to remake the high court, should he get the opportunity. 

For the right, that means the possibility the Supreme Court would become a conservative bulwark against legal challenges to their agenda, which includes lower taxes, strong national security, less government and more freedom.  While the left fears the court is in danger of becoming a powerful tool that could dismantle legalized abortion, undo African-Americans' hard-won civil rights gains, and take apart gays and lesbians' fight for equal treatment. 

The conservative stands Gorsuch took this session, in cases involving gun control, campaign finance reform and use of a controversial drug cocktail in executions, "likely was a foretaste of what lies ahead," according to the People for the American Way report.  And with the court set to take up potentially explosive cases involving gay rights and political redistricting, PFAW warns, Gorsuch's early tenure "was, with few exceptions, the calm before that storm." 

Alliance for Justice, a progressive organization, saw warning signs in Gorsuch's opinion in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, in which the court voted 5-4 to allow a Missouri church-based school participate in a state-funded grant program to refurbish playgrounds with recycled tires – a case that tested the Constitutional barrier between church and state. 

Not only did Gorsuch vote for a ruling "which could pave the way for the elimination of critical safeguards against diverting taxpayer money to private and religious schools," writes AFJ in its Supreme Court report, "he even wrote a concurrence, joined only by Justice Thomas, claiming the Court should have gone further.  This is a critical reminder that Supreme Court appointments have far-reaching consequences for our democracy." 

But Feldman, the Empirical SCOTUS blogger, says the left's view of Gorsuch as a wolf in wolf's clothing – and the right's view of him as a paragon of Supreme Court jurisprudence which should be replicated with the next vacancy – is premature. 

"We have information [about him] coming from a lot of different directions, that the court may be moving in a direction that we expected," he said. " I want to see more and to get a feel for who he is [as a justice].  Are the decisions swayed by personal preference or are they grounded in something that is visibly legal doctrine?"