Discussion: Meet Trump’s Conservative, All-White, Non-Harvard-Educated SCOTUS Picks

…and DC v. Heller, where Scalia invented a previously nonexistent Constitutional right to self-defense.

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Any guesses as to who actually prepared this list? I’m going with Heritage.

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I know we have many attorneys on TPM. I’ll look forward to reading their thoughts.

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Uh huh. If not Harvard, then BYU would have been my next choice.

(oops - I see that Lee only taught at BYU. Graduated from University of Chicago.)

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Where Scalia the originalist decided that “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” was meaningless surplusage.

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Someone should ask him about any of them on the list, does he even know who they apart from a name he was given and told they are hard right? If I made a list I would know all about the careers of all the possible appointees.

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No one from Harvard is a dog-whistle sort of thing for right wingers. Harvard = liberal eggheads

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Now I’m confused. Is there still a separation of powers, or does the unitary executive theory now include the Supreme Court?

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Given the number of idiots who clerked for Clarence, I’m guessing it came from Liberty Counsel.

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It’s not less so now. In particular, the University of Chicago–former Professor Obama notwithstanding–remains the leading bastion of the increasingly anachronistic “Law and Economics” school.

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At least one. One went to Yale (which is actually ranked higher in some circles), one went to Georgetown, one to Wash. U. and one to Michigan. I have no idea about the rest, since they weren’t listed, but those are not third tier law schools–singling them out for not coming from Harvard, really just plays into the liberal elitist narrative.

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Hey, the Federalist Society handed him a list and he said: “What the Hell.”

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Or Judge Reinhold, the actor we don’t see much anymore. Surely he could use the work.

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Yeah but none of them will ever sit on the Supreme Court if Trump gets into the White House. Didn’t anybody hear that the Senate has implemented a new system where voters of the next election should always get to decide who gets a hearing and a vote? Technically we’ll never fill an SC vacancy again. It’s complicated. Mitch McConnell can explain…

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http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/141774495-assisted-by-three-naked-men-with-spots-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=Z0zsWpN2ukUDXYqF4boPJaYKy4yoR4NSb59HNaB7p1YJFLeEFBJ5Xt06td7OpY9i
Yayoi Kusama, Brooklyn Bridge, May 17, 1968

Long list. Trump expects the incumbents to step into the path of an onrushing bus?

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Scalia was more insidious than a bench legislator. He was like a referee who became “hunting” buddies with the offensive coordinator. Over scotch and cigars, they’d have a conversation about how the holding penalty is ruining the game of football, whereas we need to find any excuse to call pass interference. Judicial activists in the corporate-financed conservative think tanks came to know exactly which plays to call.

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From a political standpoint, decently played by Trump.

As others point out elsewhere, it’s dead certain that he outsourced creation of this list to somebody–Heritage or someone in the GOP apparatus. But the whole list is loaded with clerks to very conservative justices and Bush appointees. This ought to have a nonzero effect on conservatives who were nervous about Trump. At least they can take some confidence that he would fill Scalia’s chair with a reliable conservative.

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William Pryor’s one of the scarier judges in that list . . . he’s a full-on Federalist Society guy, who participates in a wide range of conservative political groups and is not by any count dumb, think Roberts with a vengeance. That brief bio above doesn’t do him justice and, in fact, by mentioning that he did not support Roy Moore, you might think he’s more reasonable than the other people on that list but you’d be wrong. (Take at look at his Federalist Society bio: http://www.fed-soc.org/experts/detail/william-h-pryor-jr or the recent Lambda Legal press release suggesting that he’s the most antigay judge in “recent memory”: http://www.lambdalegal.org/news/ny_20050426_william-pryor-is-most-demonstrably-antigay-judicial-nominee.)

That said, Pryor’s confirmation hearings would be interesting. He’s the only judge I can think of who apparently worked as a gay porn model to pay for school. Pryor has denied that photos of him that surfaced a few years ago are him but . . . his denials are interesting. He didn’t say “that is not me” he said “these accusations are totally false”, without saying what those “accusations” might be . . . a classic non-denial denial. There’s a pretty good summary of the Pryor gay porn photos here: http://blogs.findlaw.com/eleventh_circuit/2013/09/accusations-of-bias-in-11th-cir-judge-pryors-nude-photo-scandal.html.

Given that his Pryor’s career has touched on gay rights and that the future court will be wrangling some with gay rights, I can’t imagine the photos not showing up in confirmation hearings. There’s certainly nothing wrong, from my point of view, with doing a bit of porn modeling to help pay for school but, ahem, when it intersects with your career, it does raise some issues. Maybe the photos aren’t Pryor and he can just say so. Or, maybe he’s changed his mind about homosexuality over the years. Or, maybe he was just paying for school. Hard to say but certainly interesting questions.

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The Dumpster, Mr. I’ll do anything to keep my orange mug the first thing you see daily on any website…

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