WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump reveled in the biggest political victory of his presidency at a White House ceremony on Monday in which his Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch was sworn in, poised to make an instant impact on a court once again dominated by conservatives.

Trump was able to fulfill a top campaign promise when the Republican-led U.S. Senate voted to confirm the conservative Colorado-based federal appeals court judge to the lifetime job on Friday despite vehement Democratic opposition.

With Gorsuch aboard, the court has five conservative justices and four liberals, a majority that could be pivotal in deciding a range of issues including abortion, gun control, the death penalty, presidential powers, political spending, environmental regulation and religious rights.

Standing in the White House Rose Garden under bright sunshine on a warm spring day, Trump tied the occasion to the political aims of his administration, as the eight other members of the nation’s highest court looked on.

“Together we are in a process of reviewing and renewing and also rebuilding our country,” Trump told an audience that included conservative activists and administration officials. “A new optimism is sweeping across our land and a new faith in America is filling our hearts and lifting our sights.”

Gorsuch filled a vacancy that had lingered for nearly 14 months after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s February 2016 death. Gorsuch’s judicial oath was administered by Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch worked as a clerk as a young lawyer. Gorsuch becomes the first justice to serve alongside a former boss.

Trump made a point of thanking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his role in winning confirmation. McConnell last week led the effort to change long-standing Senate rules in order to end a Democratic blockade of Gorsuch’s nomination. Under McConnell’s leadership, the Senate last year refused to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Scalia, an appointment that would have tilted the court to the left for the first time in decades.

“I’ve always heard that the most important thing that a president of the United States does is appoint people, hopefully great people like this appointment, to the United States Supreme Court,” Trump said.

“He will decide cases not based on his personal preferences but based on a fair and objective reading of the law,” Trump said of Gorsuch.

Judge Neil Gorsuch (L) is sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court by the senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy (not pictured), as U.S. President Donald J. Trump (C) watches with Louise Gorsuch in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump pledged to pick a justice who would overturn the landmark 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Gorsuch declined to answer about whether Roe v. Wade and other important court precedents were properly decided.

‘FAITHFUL SERVANT’

“To the American people, I am humbled by the trust placed in me today,” Gorsuch said, with his wife Louise and the Republican president standing behind him. “I will never forget that to whom much is given, much will be expected. And I promise you that I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great nation.”

Those attending included liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called Trump “a faker” during the presidential campaign but later said she regretted the remark. Trump at the time called for her resignation, saying her “mind is shot.”

Scalia’s widow, Maureen, also attended.

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.

Gorsuch, 49, could serve for decades. Trump may be able to make further appointments to make the court even more solidly conservative, with three justices 78 or older: Ginsburg, 84; fellow liberal Stephen Breyer, 78; and conservative swing vote Kennedy, 80.

Gorsuch will take part in the court’s next round of oral arguments, starting on April 17. They include a religious rights case on April 19 in which a Missouri church is objecting to being denied state funds for a playground project due to a state ban on providing public money to religious organizations.

Gorsuch can be expected to have an immediate impact on the court. He takes part on Thursday in the justices’ private conference to decide which cases to take up.

Slideshow (13 Images)

Among cases up for discussion is one in which gun activists are seeking to expand gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public. Another is a bid to reinstate Republican-backed North Carolina voting restrictions that a lower court found were intended to suppress black voter turnout. A third concerns whether a Christian bakery owner can object on religious grounds to making a cake for a gay couple.

With Gorsuch sworn in, his new colleagues could decide to hear new arguments in their next term, starting in October, in cases argued during their current term in which they may have been split 4-4 and did not yet decide.</s>U.S. Supreme Court nominee judge Neil Gorsuch smiles in reaction to a question as he testifies during the third day of his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. on March 22, 2017. (REUTERS/Jim Bourg/File Photo)

Neil Gorsuch, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, is due to be sworn in on Monday morning with a formal appearance at the White House, marking the biggest triumph so far for the new administration.

The lifetime appointment reinstates the nine-seat court’s 5-4 conservative majority, fulfilling an important Trump campaign promise.

“He will be a great Justice,” Trump said in a Twitter post on Saturday. “Very proud of him!”

Gorsuch, 49, was the youngest Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 picked Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time. Gorsuch could be expected to serve for decades, while Trump could make further appointments to the high court to make it even more solidly conservative because three of the eight justices are 78 or older.

Gorsuch, whom the Senate confirmed on Friday, will take his judicial oath at 11 a.m. EDT in a Rose Garden ceremony. It will be administered by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch clerked as a young lawyer.

Gorsuch will become the first justice to serve alongside a former boss.

At 9 a.m. EDT, Gorsuch is due to take his separate constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, in a private ceremony at the Supreme Court .

The Senate, which last year refused to consider Democratic former president Barack Obama’s nominee to the court, on Friday voted 54-45 to approve Colorado-based federal appeals court judge Gorsuch. The vote brought to an end to an almost 14-month battle over a vacancy created by the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016.

Once sworn in, Gorsuch can prepare for the next round of oral arguments, starting on April 17, at the court, whose current term ends in June.

He will also participate in the justices’ private conference on Thursday to consider taking new cases. Appeals are pending on expanding gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public, state voting restrictions that critics say are aimed at reducing minority turnout, and allowing business owners to object on religious grounds to providing gay couples certain services.

Gorsuch could also play a vital role in some cases on which his new colleagues may have been split 4-4 and therefore did not yet decide. Those cases may have to be reargued in the court’s next term, which starts in October.</s>WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork/AP) — With a divisive confirmation process behind him, Judge Neil Gorsuch is about to take his place as the newest Supreme Court justice.

The 49-year-old appeals court judge from Colorado is to be sworn in Monday after a bruising fight that saw Republicans change the rules for approving Supreme Court picks over the fierce objection of Democrats.

First up is a private ceremony in the high court’s Justices’ Conference Room, with Chief Justice John Roberts administering the oath prescribed by the Constitution. That will be followed by a public ceremony at the White House, where Justice Anthony Kennedy is to administer the oath.

Gorsuch, who once clerked for Kennedy, will be the first member of the court to serve alongside his former boss. He replaces the late Justice Antonin Scalia, part of the court’s conservative wing for nearly three decades before he died unexpectedly in February 2016.

In nominating Gorsuch, President Donald Trump said he fulfilled a campaign pledge to pick someone in the mold of Scalia.

During 11 years on the federal appeals court in Denver, Gorsuch mirrored Scalia’s originalist approach to the law, interpreting the Constitution according to the meaning understood by those who drafted it. Like Scalia, he is a gifted writer with a flair for turning legal jargon into plain language people can understand.

Gorsuch will be seated just in time to hear one of the biggest cases of the term: a religious rights dispute over a Missouri law that bars churches from receiving public funds for general aid programs.

His 66-day confirmation process was swift, but bitterly divisive. It saw Senate Republicans trigger the “nuclear option” to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold for all future high court nominees. The change allowed the Senate to hold a final vote with a simple majority.

Most Democrats refused to support Gorsuch because they were still seething over the Republican blockade last year of President Barack Obama’s pick for the same seat, Merrick Garland. Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing for Garland, saying a high court replacement should be up to the next president.

The White House swearing-in ceremony is a departure from recent history. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were both sworn in publicly at the Supreme Court. Former Justice John Paul Stevens has argued that holding the public ceremony at the court helps drive home the justice’s independence from the White House.</s>WASHINGTON — Surrounded by family and his future colleagues, Neil Gorsuch has taken the first of two oaths as he prepares to take his place as the 113th justice of the Supreme Court.

The 49-year-old appeals court judge from Colorado is being sworn in Monday after a bruising fight that saw Republicans change the rules for approving Supreme Court picks – over the fierce objection of Democrats.

The first ceremony took place privately in the Justices’ Conference Room, with Chief Justice John Roberts administering the oath required by the Constitution.

That will be followed by a public White House ceremony, where Justice Anthony Kennedy is to administer the oath set by federal law. President Donald Trump will attend the swearing-in at the Rose Garden.

Gorsuch will be seated just in time to hear one of the biggest cases of the term — a religious rights dispute over a Missouri law that bars churches from receiving public funds for general aid programs.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump praised new Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch during a White House swearing-in ceremony on Monday as a jurist who will rule “not on his personal preferences but based on a fair and objective reading of the law.”

In the Rose Garden ceremony, Trump said Americans would see in Gorsuch “a man who is deeply faithful to the Constitution of the United States” and predicted greatness for the 49-year-old former appeals court judge from Colorado.

“I have no doubt you will go down as one of the truly great justices in the history of the U.S.,” Trump said. The president noted that the successful nomination came during his first 100 days in office and added: “You think that’s easy?”

Gorsuch, who restores the court’s conservative majority, was sworn in during the ceremony by Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he once served as a law clerk. It was the second of two oaths — the first was conducted privately in the Justices’ Conference Room by Chief Justice John Roberts.

In remarks in the Rose Garden, Gorsuch said he was humbled by his ascendance to the nation’s high court and thanked his former law clerks, saying of his former law clerks, “your names are etched in my heart forever.”

Gorsuch promised to be a “faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great nation.”

He fills the nearly 14-month-old vacancy created after the death of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who anchored the court’s conservative wing for nearly three decades before he died unexpectedly in February 2016. In nominating Gorsuch, Trump said he fulfilled a campaign pledge to pick someone in the mold of Scalia.

During 11 years on the federal appeals court in Denver, Gorsuch mirrored Scalia’s originalist approach to the law, interpreting the Constitution according to the meaning understood by those who drafted it. Like Scalia, Gorsuch is a gifted writer with a flair for turning legal jargon into plain language people can understand.

Gorsuch will be seated just in time to hear one of the biggest cases of the term: a religious rights dispute over a Missouri law that bars churches from receiving public funds for general aid programs.

His 66-day confirmation process was swift, but bitterly divisive. It saw Senate Republicans trigger the “nuclear option” to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold for Gorsuch and all future high court nominees. The change allowed the Senate to hold a final vote to approve Gorsuch with a simple majority.

Most Democrats refused to support Gorsuch because they were still seething over the Republican blockade last year of President Barack Obama’s pick for the same seat, Merrick Garland. Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing for Garland, saying a high court replacement should be up to the next president.

The White House swearing-in ceremony was a departure from recent history. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were both sworn in publicly at the Supreme Court. Former Justice John Paul Stevens has argued that holding the public ceremony at the court helps drive home the justice’s independence from the White House.

Some interesting facts about Gorsuch and the court:

—He is the youngest nominee since Clarence Thomas, who was 43 when confirmed in 1991.

—The Colorado native went to high school in Washington while his mother served as EPA administrator in the Reagan administration.

—He’s the sixth member of the court who attended Harvard Law School; the other three got their law degrees from Yale.

—Gorsuch credits a nun with teaching him how to write. He and his family attend an Episcopal church in Boulder, though he was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools as a child. He joins a court that has five Catholics and three Jews.

—As an associate justice, Gorsuch will earn $251,800 a year — over 15 percent above his $217,600 salary as an appellate judge.

—Gorsuch joins the ranks of justices who are millionaires. He reported financial assets in 2015 worth at least $3.2 million, according to his latest financial disclosure report.

Associated Press writers Mark Sherman and Ken Thomas contributed to this report.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Neil Gorsuch thanked his former law clerks, family and friends as he was sworn into the Supreme Court during a White House ceremony Monday morning.

Gorsuch said of his former law clerks, “your names are etched in my heart forever.”

The new justice joined President Donald Trump, members of the nation’s high court and his family for a Rose Garden ceremony.

Gorsuch is thanking his family for their “perseverance and patience” and his mentor, Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he served as a law clerk.

He also promised to be a “faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great nation.”

It won’t be long before Gorsuch starts revealing what he really thinks about a range of hot topics he repeatedly sidestepped during his confirmation hearing.

In less than two weeks, the justices will take up a Missouri church’s claim that the state is stepping on its religious freedom. It’s a case about Missouri’s ban on public money going to religious institutions and it carries with it potential implications for vouchers to attend private, religious schools.

Other cases the court could soon decide to hear involve gun rights, voting rights and a Colorado baker’s refusal to design a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding. Some of those cases may come up April 13, which could be Gorsuch’s first private conference — where justices decide whether to hear a case. It takes four votes to do so, though the court does not generally announce each justice’s decision.

Arkansas’ intention to execute up to eight men over 10 days beginning April 17 also could land at the court in the form of last-minute pleas for a reprieve. By late spring or early summer, the court might be asked to consider President Donald Trump’s proposed ban on visitors from six majority Muslim countries.

Also potentially awaiting Gorsuch’s decisive vote are six cases that were argued before the end of 2016 and remain unresolved. If the justices are divided 4 to 4 in any of them, the most likely route to breaking a ties would be to schedule a new round of arguments, with Gorsuch participating.

Included in that batch are lawsuits involving racial discrimination in housing and political redistricting, and the rights of detained immigrants.

Both sides in the bruising battle over Gorsuch’s nomination think they have a good sense of how he will come down on the big issues of the day, from his record as an appellate judge in Denver since 2006 and his recommendation by conservative groups. They expect Gorsuch to, in effect, restore the working conservative majority that was in place when Justice Antonin Scalia was alive. Gorsuch will take the seat of the conservative icon who died in February 2016.

While that remains uncertain, it’s safer to say Gorsuch should know his way around the venerable building.

Like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, Gorsuch once served as a law clerk at the court, so the building’s layout and its idiosyncratic ways will be somewhat familiar to him. Samuel Alito reported he sometimes had trouble finding his way around as a new justice, and the challenge was all the greater because the court was going through a major renovation at the time.

Alito had argued cases in front of the justices, but he said it didn’t prepare him for the building’s confusing layout or the view from the bench.

 “It was unreal. It was sort of surreal. I’ve had many times during those periods where I’ve had to pinch myself to say, ‘Yeah, you’re really here. You’re on the Supreme Court. This is really happening,'” Alito told the Newark Star-Ledger in an interview in July 2006, a half of a year after joining the court.

Further easing Gorsuch’s transition is that his former boss, Justice Anthony Kennedy, remains on the court. It’s the first time a justice will serve alongside his former clerk.

The 49-year-old Coloradan also will be the first member of Generation X, the cohort of Americans following the post-World War II baby boom, to reach the court. He’ll be the youngest justice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 84, is the oldest.

As the newest justice, Gorsuch will also take over two duties performed by Kagan since 2010. When the justices are alone in their conference room and someone knocks on the door, it is the junior justice who answers. He also will become the newest member of the court’s cafeteria committee, where replacing Kagan will be no mean feat. Her tenure brought with it a frozen yogurt machine.

Follow @CBSBaltimore on Twitter and like WJZ-TV | CBS Baltimore on Facebook</s>
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• Now Playing: Matthew Dowd says Kushner, Bannon and Priebus are 'the three faces of Donald Trump'</s>WASHINGTON — Donald Trump, in possibly his biggest win to date as president, celebrated Neil Gorsuch’s ceremonial swearing-in to the Supreme Court at the White House on Monday, nodding to the fact that not everything has been easy in his first 100 days in the White House.

Gorsuch now becomes part of Trump’s legacy as president. And someone who, with his lifetime appointment, will outlast the President in the upper echelons of government.

And Trump, addressing the nomination fight from the Rose Garden, couldn’t contain his excitement.

“We are here to celebrate history,” Trump said. “I have always heard, the most important thing that a President does is appoint people, hopefully great people, like this appointment, to the United States Supreme Court. And I can say, this is a great honor.”

Then, in a nod to the complications he has run into throughout his first 80 days in office and the looming symbolic 100-day deadline for his presidency, Trump gave himself a pat on the back.

“And I got it done in the first 100 days,” Trump said to laughs. “That’s even nice. You think that is easy?”

Trump said he had faith in Gorsuch.

“Our country is counting on your to be wise, impartial and fair. To serve under our laws, not over them and to safeguard the right of the people to govern their own affairs,” Trump said. “I have no doubt you will rise to the occasion and that the decision you will make will not only protect our Constitution today but for many generations to come.”

All eight other Supreme Court justices attend Gorsuch’s ceremonial swearing in, including Anthony Kennedy, who swore in the new justice. Gorsuch clerked for Kennedy in the 1990s and said the justice was his mentor.

The Supreme Court, and Trump’s power to appoint at least one justice, if not more, was a key reason many conservatives backed Trump in the primary against a host of other Republican challengers.

Trump — then the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — released a potential list of conservative jurists he would pick in May, should he be elected president. He issued a second list later in that summer.

The announcement was politically savvy: As Trump struggled to convince conservatives to join his team, the list stood as a promise that he would alter the Supreme Court, should he get the chance.

Trump also thanked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the moment. McConnell last year refused to consider the nomination of President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, and then worked to discard with the custom of 60 votes needed to break a Democratic filibuster.

“I especially want to express our gratitude for Sen. Mitch McConell for all that he did to make this achievement possible,” Trump said.

Gorsuch, speaking briefly after the swearing in, used much of his time to thank those who helped him through the process.

“Thank you for the very warm welcome,” Gorsuch said to other members of the Supreme Court. “I look forward to many happy years together.”

And to the American people, Gorsuch said he was humbled by their trust.

“I will never forget for to whom much is given, much will be expected and I promise you that I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the constitutional laws of this great nation,” he concluded.</s>Neil Gorsuch was being sworn in as the 113th justice in the history of the Supreme Court on Monday — but more importantly, as the ninth justice who will bring the court back to full strength after 14 months in the wilderness.

Chief Justice John Roberts did the first set of honors in a private ceremony in the justices' conference room, where Gorsuch took his judicial oath, his hand on a family Bible held by his wife, Louise. All the current justices were in attendance, along with most of their spouses. Also present were Gorsuch's two daughters, as well as the widow and a son of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat Gorsuch will take.

Two hours later at the White House, Gorsuch will take his constitutional oath as a federal employee from Justice Anthony Kennedy, the longest-serving current justice, who employed Gorsuch as a law clerk nearly a quarter-century ago.

Then the newest, youngest (at 49) member of the court can get to work, and he faces a heavy workload. There are cases to be heard in the next two weeks, including an important one on the separation of church and state. There are petitions to consider, which could lead to new cases next term on guns, voting rights and same-sex marriage. And there are cases already heard that might be deadlocked at 4-4 in which Gorsuch could be asked to cast the deciding vote after a rehearing.</s>On Monday April 10, Justice Neil Gorsuch of Colorado’s 10th District Court was sworn in as the 113th Supreme Court Justice, restoring the court’s conservative-liberal balance. The swearing in of a Supreme Court justice involves the administration of two oaths. Chief Justice Roberts administered the Constitutional Oath in a private ceremony attended by Gorsuch’s family. The Judicial Oath was delivered at a ceremony in The White House Rose Garden. The Rose Garden ceremony was especially poignant because Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the oath. Early in his career, Judge Gorsuch served as a clerk for Justice Kennedy. Justice Gorsuch is the first Supreme Court justice in history to serve alongside a justice for whom he previously clerked.

“I cannot tell you how honored I am today to have my mentor Justice Kennedy to administer the judicial oath, a very beautiful oath, as he did 11 years ago,” Gorsuch said. “This process has reminded me how outrageously blessed I am.”

Judge Gorsuch joins the Supreme Court after a vacancy of over a year which occurred with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. “To the Scalia family, I won’t ever forget that the seat I inherit today is that of a very, very great man,” Gorsuch said. Justice Gorsuch who describes himself as a “textualist” shares the “originalist” view of the Constitution espoused by Justice Scalia.

Gorsuch’s 54-45 confirmation vote, which was made possible through Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell deploying the so called “nuclear option” which enabled confirmation through a simple majority instead of the previous threshold of 60 votes, follows months of a contentiousness between Republicans and Democrats who were upset that President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland never received a hearing.

Despite the right-left divide surrounding the Gorsuch nomination, today’s ceremony in the Rose Garden was a proud moment for President Donald Trump. “I’ve always heard that the most important thing that a president of the United States does is appoint people — hopefully great people like this appointment — to the United States Supreme,” Trump said. “And I got it done in the first 100 days.”

Leonora Cravotta is the Program & Talent Director for Red State Talk Radio, the Co-Host for the Scott Adams Show, a political radio talk show, and a syndicated writer for conservative publications.
President Donald Trump's pick for the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, is sworn in at the White House.