Donald Trump announced a list of eleven people from whom he would nominate his first Supreme Court pick if elected president. It's a list of good people including many prominent judges from both federal and state courts. I don't know many of those on the list, but at first glance, they all seem qualified.
That's today's news. What we got in response to the list, however, is the usual garbage. There are pundits and other purported journalists who are covering the list with regard to how it fits into Trump's election strategy. Is this a move to mollify conservatives? Is it intended to somehow achieve party unity? There's more like this, but the main point is that the stories have nothing to do with the people on the list. Why would the media check into those named and provide America with the details? That would force the media and the pundits to actually do their jobs. They would rather just speculate on how it ties into the campaign.
Another group of responses to Trump's list has been to express shock that Trump would pick a list of such good people. It's a variant of the story that says that Trump is a moron so anything that he does well must be a fluke.
The sad thing about all these stories is that miss the basic truth about this selection. There is surely no doubt that Trump did not compile this list himself. He told those involved what sort of qualities and qualifications he wanted in a nominee, and they did the enormous amount of legwork needed to come up with the list. Trump surely reviewed the list and a summary report about each potential nominee. Most likely, however, he did not even meet with the people on the list. That procedure is how any president would accomplish this task. Indeed, what the list does is to provide us with a pretty good idea of what Trump is looking for in a Supreme Court nominee. He wants judicial experience; everyone on the list is already a judge. He wants relative youth; most of these folks would be on the Supreme Court for 20 years (assuming good health). He wants an originalist view of the Constitution. In other words, Trump wants someone who says that the Constitution needs to be interpreted as it was originally written and not how some judges decide it should be changed centuries later. He also seems to want to steer clear of the usual legal elites; none of the potential nominees went to Harvard Law School. One is from Yale Law School and one from Stanford, but the bulk are from high quality but other law schools.
The truth is that this is a list of very good people.
That's today's news. What we got in response to the list, however, is the usual garbage. There are pundits and other purported journalists who are covering the list with regard to how it fits into Trump's election strategy. Is this a move to mollify conservatives? Is it intended to somehow achieve party unity? There's more like this, but the main point is that the stories have nothing to do with the people on the list. Why would the media check into those named and provide America with the details? That would force the media and the pundits to actually do their jobs. They would rather just speculate on how it ties into the campaign.
Another group of responses to Trump's list has been to express shock that Trump would pick a list of such good people. It's a variant of the story that says that Trump is a moron so anything that he does well must be a fluke.
The sad thing about all these stories is that miss the basic truth about this selection. There is surely no doubt that Trump did not compile this list himself. He told those involved what sort of qualities and qualifications he wanted in a nominee, and they did the enormous amount of legwork needed to come up with the list. Trump surely reviewed the list and a summary report about each potential nominee. Most likely, however, he did not even meet with the people on the list. That procedure is how any president would accomplish this task. Indeed, what the list does is to provide us with a pretty good idea of what Trump is looking for in a Supreme Court nominee. He wants judicial experience; everyone on the list is already a judge. He wants relative youth; most of these folks would be on the Supreme Court for 20 years (assuming good health). He wants an originalist view of the Constitution. In other words, Trump wants someone who says that the Constitution needs to be interpreted as it was originally written and not how some judges decide it should be changed centuries later. He also seems to want to steer clear of the usual legal elites; none of the potential nominees went to Harvard Law School. One is from Yale Law School and one from Stanford, but the bulk are from high quality but other law schools.
The truth is that this is a list of very good people.
No comments:
Post a Comment