At The Hill, Alexander Bolton reports: Conservatives press Trump on Supreme Court pick. It begins:
Influential conservatives are pressing President-elect Donald Trump to nominate Bill Pryor, a judge feared and disdained by liberals but loved by conservatives because of his “titanium spine,” to the Supreme Court.
Pryor is said to be on Trump’s short list to replace the legendary conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died almost a year ago.
Trump told reporters Wednesday that he will announce his nominee within two weeks of taking the oath of office on Jan. 20.
Conservatives want an intellectual heavyweight to fill Scalia’s shoes and fulfill Trump’s promise made during last year’s campaign to nominate a justice “in the mold of Scalia.”
Also:
“[Conservatives] want to get a judge who is going to follow the Constitution according to its text, structure and original public meaning,” said [John] Malcolm [director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation] who prepared a list of judicial recommendations for Trump on behalf of the Heritage Foundation.
…
Malcolm and Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, are among the two most influential outside voices advising the Trump transition team on whom to pick for the court.
(Via How Appealing). Also, at Above the Law, David Lat reports that President-Elect Trump interviewed Judge Pryor on Saturday.
At SCOTUSblog, profiles of the leading candidates, including Judge Pryor plus judges Gorsuch, Colloton and Gruender.
On Gorsuch, the profile comments:
He is celebrated as a keen legal thinker and a particularly incisive legal writer, with a flair that matches — or at least evokes — that of the justice whose seat he would be nominated to fill. In fact, one study has identified him as the most natural successor to Justice Antonin Scalia on the Trump shortlist, both in terms of his judicial style and his substantive approach.
Posted at 6:22 AM