President Donald Trump has named federal judge Neil M. Gorsuch as his nominee to the Supreme Court to replace the late Antonin Scalia.
Gorsuch and another federal judge, Thomas Hardiman, were believed to be the final two candidates for Scalia’s seat on the bench, which has been vacant for nearly a year.
Gorsuch, 49, is currently a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He attended school at Columbia, Harvard and Oxford, and he clerked for two Supreme Court Justices: Byron White and Anthony Kennedy.
Gorsuch was in private practice in Washington, D.C., until 2006, when President George W. Bush named him to the 10th Circuit bench. Gorsuch would be the first Supreme Court Justice to serve on the Court with a Justice he had clerked for at one time.
The nominee shares a similar background with Scalia. Gorsuch is a proponent of originalism and textualism, two schools of legal thought that emphasize the Founders’ intent and its application to the interpretation of constitutional questions.
Gorsuch’s nomination now goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee to consideration. In past years, the confirmation process has taken from two to three months as the Senate considers and debates the nominee.
