Story highlights The fight against confirming Neil Gorsuch was predictable, but it may have some surprising consequences for Democrats

They have lost leverage to oppose another justice nomination if there is a second vacancy during the Trump administration

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) This was an eventful week for two government institutions, the Supreme Court and Senate. More than a year after Justice Antonin Scalia's death, the high court will on Monday finally return to a full complement of nine justices. But the confirmation of the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, happened only after the Senate decided, on a party-line vote, to exercise the "nuclear option" and remove filibusters for Supreme Court nominations.

These developments sound like a really big deal, but they were easily predictable given our toxic political climate and won't actually change the operation of either institution. But here are five takeaways for our post-nuclear-option world:

Ilya Shapiro

1. The Supreme Court. The court effectively returns to the status quo before Scalia's death. No two justices are the same, but Gorsuch could have been expected to vote the same as Scalia on all the hot-button cases that broke down 5-4, and also on the cases (especially in criminal procedure) that joined the court's left and right against the middle. As it turns out, Scalia's absence only changed the result in a handful of cases and the court has largely succeeded in avoiding 4-4 splits. Adding a ninth justice will, however, make it marginally easier to get the four votes needed to "grant cert" (have a case accepted for review), especially on potentially controversial issues.

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