As a federal appeals court judge for more than 10 years, Neil Gorsuch is no doubt familiar with the meaning of the legal metaphor "fruit of the poisonous tree": When evidence is obtained illegitimately, it is inadmissible in court, no matter how solid it is.

The metaphor can now be applied directly to Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court. His three-day confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee ended Thursday. He is a solid judge in the mainstream of American judicial thought, albeit to the right edge of the stream. He may well be confirmed by the Senate, though it could take the "nuclear option" of killing the filibuster to do it. But he is the fruit of a twice-poisoned tree.

Gorsuch, 49, could serve on the court for three decades or more. During his entire tenure, there will be two questions about his legitimacy. One is the Merrick Garland question. Two is the Donald Trump question.

Gorsuch would still be back on a federal appeals panel in Denver if not for the shameful nine-month refusal by Senate Republicans to take up President Barack Obama's appointment of Garland to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Garland's moderate credentials were impeccable, but the process was poisoned.

And then there are questions, which daily grow more urgent, about the legitimacy of Trump's own election. If it is found that the Russian government, possibly with the help of Trump associates, swayed the election on Trump's behalf, then Gorsuch will have been nominated by a president elected in a poisoned process.

Were this a normal appointment by a normal Republican president, Gorsuch would merit confirmation. The president has the right to nominate whomever he wants, as long as he or she is qualified for the job and not out of the broad mainstream of judicial thought.

We have doubts about Gorsuch's "textualist" and "originalist" judicial philosophy. He holds that judges should confine themselves to the Constitution as written, and where the words are in doubt, judges should interpret them as the Founders would have in 1787.

The Founders knew that America would evolve. They didn't burden the Constitution with hard and fast language, but rather language that would flex with the time.

We wish Gorsuch had not so effectively played dodgeball with hot-button issues like abortion, campaign finance and privacy. But that's how the game is played in these hyper-partisan days. Regardless of the party of the president who appoints them, nominees try to say as little as possible as affably as possible at great length.

Gorsuch will fit neatly in Scalia's chair. The court will resume its 5-4 corporate conservative majority, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing a swing vote on some social issues. But senators for whom the court's legitimacy is important will find the nominee inadmissible.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH