Noah Feldman, Columnist

Neil Gorsuch, Elite Conservative

Democrats looking for a Supreme Court justice they can work with should avoid a bruising fight.

February 1, 2017 at 2:58 AM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Hey, look, another Ivy League grad!
Photographer: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

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“Was that a surprise?” asked President Donald Trump on Tuesday night after the pseudo-drama of the reality-show-style bakeoff between two finalists whittled down from a list of 21. Well, no. Trump’s Supreme Court pick was resoundingly predictable. I say that simply because I did predict the selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch back on Nov. 16 -- based on his close fit to the profile sought by conservative legal elites.

There was nothing very deep about my prediction. Having promised to leave the decision to the Federalist Society, Trump did exactly that. He gave them an intellectual who went to Harvard Law School like Justice Antonin Scalia (and five other members of the current court); studied in Oxford as a Marshall scholar like Justice Stephen Breyer; clerked on the Supreme Court like three other sitting justices; and has been reliably conservative for years. He even looks like the TV version of a Supreme Court justice, complete with silver hair and a firm jaw.