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. Justice Gorsuch who describes himself as a “textualist” shares the “originalist” view of the Constitution espoused by Justice Scalia. “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. 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. 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.
President Donald Trump's pick for the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, is sworn in at the White House.