While Supreme Court vacancies capture national attention, a president can leave a lasting legacy by getting like-minded justices confirmed to USA district, circuit and other courts across the country.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the nominees were all “chosen for their deep knowledge of the law and their commitment to upholding constitutional principles”.
Before Trump was elected, Stras was on Trump’s list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees.
President Donald Trump has nominated a Minnesota Supreme Court justice for a federal appeals court.
Trump also nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a professor at Notre Dame Law School who clerked for Scalia on the Supreme Court and Senior Judge Laurence Silberman on the D.C. Circuit, to serve on the 7th Circuit.
The nomination of another judge from the Supreme Court list, U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar of Kentucky, is pending.
The president will also nominate two people for federal judgeships: Dabney L. Friedrich of Washington, D.C., and Terry F. Moorer of Alabama.
The White House announced that David Stras received the Trump nod Monday, May 8, for the appeals court in the Eighth Circuit, which hears cases for Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa and Arkansas. The Senate confirmed only 20 of Obama’s judicial nominees during 2015 and 2016, less than a third the number that were confirmed in the last two years of the Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
President Trump borrowed a page from George W. Bush’s playbook Monday by nominating 10 federal court judges en masse, nearly 16 years to the day that Bush named 11 appeals court judges – including a Washington lawyer named John Roberts who soon became chief justice of the United States.
The conservative Larsen was named to the Michigan Supreme Court on September 30, 2015, by Governor Rick Snyder. Minnesota Supreme Court nominees do not have to be confirmed by the Legislature but do have to stand for election.
“Gun owners certainly welcome the courts becoming more “gun friendly” under a Trump presidency”, Pratt said.
Trump is the 45th President of the United States.
After the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his immigration ban, Trump emphatically tweeted last February “SEE YOU IN COURT!”
Before he took office on the court, he wrote a legal brief on behalf of Pawlenty, a fact that Democrats use to criticize him. “The Trump administration has made clear its intention to benefit from Republican obstructionism and to pack the federal courts with ultraconservatives given a stamp of approval by the Federalist Society”, said Nan Aron, the president of the Alliance for Justice, referring to the conservative legal group. The real reason Reid and his caucus did what they did was to pave the way for President Obama to stack federal courts, especially the powerful DC circuit, with liberals.
Stras formerly clerked for conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and shares the belief in a limited role for the judiciary.
Larsen has been on the bench only 19 months, since Governor Rick Snyder named her to the state Supreme Court.
“We will be scrutinizing all of the nominees’ records carefully and urge senators to do the same”. “Especially when one looks at the names to be announced for appellate court vacancies, this is as strong a list of nominees as one could hope for”.
