Washington – Denver native Neil Gorsuch won U.S. Senate confirmation Thursday night to the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Gorsuch’s nomination was approved on a voice vote. Individual votes weren’t tallied because the nomination wasn’t deemed controversial.
Gorsuch, 38, went to the Senate to watch the vote, accompanied by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.
“From my conversations with Mr. Gorsuch, I am certain that he recognizes the proper role of the judiciary,” Allard said. “I believe that Mr. Gorsuch is temperamentally and intellectually inclined to stick to the facts and the law in cases that would come before him and that he would refrain from legislating from the bench.”
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., also supported Gorsuch.
“While Mr. Gorsuch has spent the majority of his professional life in Washington, D.C., his roots in the state of Colorado are strong, going back four generations,” Salazar said. “… I hope that he will live up to the standard set by a long line of distinguished jurists from our state.”
Gorsuch’s published works show conservative leanings. In a 2005 article in the National Review, Gorsuch argued that “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda.”
Gorsuch will fill the position vacated by Judge David Ebel, who is taking senior status.
The 10th Circuit serves Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Utah.
Gorsuch graduated from Columbia University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University.
Currently he is principal deputy to the associate U.S. attorney general, helping manage the Justice Department’s civil litigation.
Gorsuch’s mother is the late Anne Gorsuch Burford, a Coloradan who was chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Reagan.
