VERMILLION, SD (KELO AM) A South Dakota expert says you can expect a longer than usual confirmation process for Denver Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's pick for the U.S. Supreme Court.
University of South Dakota Law Professor, Patrick Garry, says there will be aggressive opposition from the Democrats, as the Republicans close ranks, even though Gorsuch is a well known quantity.
"He received unamious confirmation by the Senate back in 2006, so you would think that would help, but I think we are going to be starting from ground zero here. Its one thing to be appointed to the 10th Circuit, it's another, of course, to be appointed to the Supreme Court," says Garry.
Gorsuch is very much in the vein of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the conservative constitutional originalist he would replace on the high court. Ironically, Garry says, Scalia once argued that the politically polarizing confirmation process was proof the Supreme Court had become too activist through the years.
"He saw that it was a sign, to him, that the court was injecting itself into too many areas where it shouldn't be," remembers Garry.
Garry says that until the New Deal issues of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration and the activism of the Warren Court in the 60s and 70s, there was relatively little controversy over the role of the court. He says it seemed to operate in a general atomsphere of consensus..
This will be a long polarizing battle to replace one conservative with another. The stakes will be even higher if Trump has to pick a replacement for a liberal member of the Nation's highest court.
"Then you would have an even more heightened atmosphere", says Garry.
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