How Much Will Neil Gorsuch Really Change The Supreme Court?

From a conservative point of view, the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court was a huge deal, because of both his solid originalist record on the 10^th Circuit bench and the seat on the high court that he was destined to fill. For conservatives to preserve the center-right status quo that has more or less endured on the Court since the early 1990’s, it was vital that someone at least as committed to the Constitution as Antonin Scalia be nominated and confirmed to the vacancy.

But for liberals, the stakes were much lower—despite the fact that Democratic senators were howling left and right that if Gorsuch was confirmed, it would mean the end of the republic as we know it. Liberals have survived the past two decades with a Court nearly identical, ideologically, to the one that will soon take shape, once Gorsuch begins hearing cases. They’ve even gotten a few wins—the survival of Obamacare, the nationwide legalization of gay marriage—out of the equation.

Which is why I continue to struggle to understand why Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democratic caucus in the Senate felt it was worth sacrificing the filibuster for high court nominees in a fruitless effort to prevent Gorsuch’s elevation. Why make the replacement of one conservative justice with another the hill to die on, rather than waiting and saving ammunition for the next vacancy, when Democrats could well be confronted with the idea of Donald Trump replacing an outspoken liberal with a conservative?

Others, many others, have asked the same question since the announcement of Gorsuch’s nomination. The likeliest answer seems to be that the Democratic base was exerting so much pressure on members of Congress to oppose Trump and his nominees at every step, that Democrats were cowed into doing what in their hearts they knew was strategically stupid. Sure, if Democrats had saved their fire until Trump’s next Court pick, the same end result would probably have occurred—the filibuster would have been gutted, and the nominee would have been confirmed. But in that case, liberals would have had more public credibility from keeping their opposition to Gorsuch low-key, and their hysterical opposition would have been more believable—translating to greater public support, as opposed to now, when that opposition is easier to see as more of a reflexive rejection to anything Trump-related, no matter the circumstances.

Gorsuch and Scalia are different people, no doubt about it. There is evidence to suggest that on some issues, Gorsuch may actually be a little to the right of Scalia. And the former’s relative youth ensures that, absent sudden circumstance, he could well be deciding cases for decades to come. But overall, Democrats’ decision to go all-in on opposition to Gorsuch, rather than saving ammunition for later, was pretty shortsighted of them.