Neil Gorsuch, picked by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Republican- led Senate, has been sworn in as a US Supreme Court justice at the White House.
Trump earned the biggest political victory of his presidency and fulfilled a major campaign promise when the Senate voted on Friday to confirm the conservative federal appeals court judge from Colorado to the lifetime job despite vehement Democratic opposition.
With Gorsuch aboard, the court once again has five conservative justices and four liberals.
Gorsuch took his judicial oath in a White House Rose Garden ceremony with Trump watching on, filling a vacancy that lingered for nearly 14 months after the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016.
The oath was administered by Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch worked as a clerk as a young lawyer.
Gorsuch will become the first justice to serve alongside a former boss.
All the other members of the court were at the ceremony, including liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called Trump “a faker” last year during the presidential campaign but later said she regretted the remark. Trump at the time called on her to resign and said her “mind is shot”.
Scalia’s widow, Maureen, also attended the ceremony.
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.
Trump made Gorsuch, 49, the youngest Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 selected Clarence Thomas, who was then 43.
Gorsuch could be expected to serve for decades, and Trump could make further appointments to the high court to make it even more solidly conservative, with three of the eight justices 78 or older: Ginsburg, 84; fellow liberal Stephen Breyer, 78; and conservative swing vote Kennedy, 80.
Gorsuch could play a vital role in some cases on which his new colleagues may have been split 4-4 along ideological lines and therefore did not yet decide.
-NewstalkZB
