Conservatives hope new US Supreme Court pick will toe the line

Washington

IN THE weeks after Antonin Scalia's death last year, Judge Neil Gorsuch hailed the conservative icon as a "lion of the law" who transformed how judges think.

Conservatives are now betting that Mr Gorsuch, the 49-year-old appellate judge who is President Donald Trump's pick for the US Supreme Court, will be a worthy disciple to Mr Scalia and won't veer to the left like some previous Republican nominees.

"In our legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws," Mr Gorsuch said on Tuesday night to a White House crowd that included top Republican lawmakers. "It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people's representatives."

In accepting the nomination, Mr Gorsuch repeated his description of Mr Scalia from his April 2016 speech about the late justice. Mr Gorsuch's public record gives every indication he will follow - and perhaps extend - Mr Scalia's path, assuming the nominee is confirmed by the Senate. He ruled that a corporation could claim a religious exemption to the Obamacare contraception-coverage requirement. He argued for curbing class-action securities-fraud suits. He wrote a book arguing against legalisation of euthanasi…