Students, faculty and community members gathered to hear a forum on the U.S. Supreme Court under U.S. President Donald Trump Sept. 15, part of the two-day 2017 Supreme Court Preview held annually at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, which provides law students an opportunity to earn six CLE credits.

“Trump and the Court,” moderated by Adam Liptak, the Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, featured three panelists from different backgrounds in the legal field who discussed how the Court would be affected under Trump. The panel discussed the arrival of a new justice, Neil Gorsuch, who replaced the late Justice Antonin Scalia and the potential resignation of Justice Anthony Kennedy looming in the future.

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Co-Director of Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic Pamela Karlan said she believed that more would account for Gorsuch’s impact on the interpersonal dynamic of the court than just his activity level and assertiveness.

“I think the most extraordinary thing was his separate opinion in Pavan [v. Smith],” Karlan said.

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“Karlan said that the new judge’s younger age would solidify his legacy as a Trump appointee.

He’s 40 years younger, which means that he’s going to be around on the Supreme Court long after Donald Trump is gone, even if Donald Trump makes it through four years,” Karlan said. “[Gorsuch is] a different kind of Conservative because he came up in a different stage of the Conservative legal movement.”

“He’s 40 years younger, which means that he’s going to be around on the Supreme Court long after Donald Trump is gone, even if Donald Trump makes it through four years,” Karlan said. “[Gorsuch is] a different kind of Conservative because he came up in a different stage of the Conservative legal movement.”

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“Affirmative action is at risk,” Karlan said. “Abortion is at risk. Not because it would overturn Roe v. Wade itself directly but because they would whittle it down to a doorstop. You’d never see any burden that was undue.”