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Report: Trump May Appoint Judge Neil Gorsuch to SCOTUS

Judge Neil Gorsuch / Facebook
January 23, 2017

President Donald Trump may pick Judge Neil Gorsuch of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to fill the Supreme Court's current vacancy.

Gorsuch could be Trump's leading candidate to nominate to the Supreme Court to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford reported over the weekend. Trump is reportedly close to making his decision.

Gorsuch, a Marshall Scholar who boasts degrees from Oxford and Harvard Law School, was a clerk for Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy, the Daily Caller reported. Before he was nominated to the 10th Circuit in 2006 by President George W. Bush, Gorsuch worked in a private practice at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel PLLC, and as an official in the Justice Department during the Bush administration.

Gorsuch has been compared to Scalia for his originalist interpretation of the Constitution and his elegant writing skills.

Like Scalia, Gorsuch is a faithful textualist, dubious of efforts to derail religious expression in public places (Summum v. Pleasant Grove City), skeptical of legislative history, thinks criminal law should be interpreted in favor of the defendant, and is critical of the of the commerce clause.

Gorsuch wrote the book The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasiapublished in 2009 by Princeton University Press, and contributed to The Law of Judicial Precedent, a treatise compiled by Black's Law Dictionary editor Bryan Garner.

At 49 years old, Gorsuch could serve for decades on the Supreme Court. With his impressive academic credentials, Gorsuch is a less controversial pick for appointment than Judge William Pryor, a conservative judge on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and favorite of Attorney General-desigante Jeff Sessions, the Daily Caller noted.

An announcement on Trump's pick is expected early next week.