Tonight, President Donald Trump will be announcing his pick for the U.S. Supreme Court to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Who are they and what do they stand for?
The leading contenders are all very conservative, all relatively young, all millionaires, all originally nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, all white and all men – Judge Neil Gorsuch of the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Judge William Pryor of theAtlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and Judge Thomas Hardiman of Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Neil Gorsuch
Neil Gorsuch of Colorado will turn 50 in the summer, which would make him among the youngest of recent Supreme Court nominees. He was appointed in 2006 and has an exemplary academic and legal resume graduating from Oxford University (DPhil), Harvard Law School (JD) and Columbia University (BA). He was a law clerk for Justice Byron White and Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court. In his private practice experience he represented mostly corporate clients.
Other Facts:
- In regards to intellectual property cases decided, Judge Gorsuch has handled 7 trademark, 4 copyright, 3 trade secret cases, but no patent matters.
- His best-known votes are in decisions siding with challenges to regulations requiring employers to provide birth control coverage for women under the Affordable Care Act.
- His mother, Anne Gorsuch, served in the Colorado House of Representatives before Ronald Reagan nominated her to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (the first woman to hold the post).
- He is recognized for his keen legal thinking and for being an eloquent, gifted writer
- Judge Gorsuch has some sympathy for claims of religious freedom, as reflected in his votes in the Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor cases
- According to a SCOTUSblog profile, Gorsuch “is an ardent textualist (like Scalia); he believes criminal laws should be clear and interpreted in favor of defendants even if that hurts government prosecutions (like Scalia); he is skeptical of efforts to purge religious expression from public spaces (like Scalia); he is highly dubious of legislative history (like Scalia); and he is less than enamored of the dormant commerce clause (like Scalia). In fact, some of the parallels can be downright eerie.”
- Notable quote: “Under Chevron the people aren’t just charged with awareness of and the duty to conform their conduct to the fairest reading of the law that a detached magistrate can muster. Instead, they are charged with an awareness of Chevron; required to guess whether the statute will be declared “ambiguous” (courts often disagree on what qualifies); and required to guess (again) whether an agency’s interpretation will be deemed “reasonable.” Who can even attempt all that, at least without an army of perfumed lawyers and lobbyists? And, of course, that’s not the end of it. Even if the people somehow manage to make it through this far unscathed, they must always remain alert to the possibility that the agency will reverse its current view 180 degrees anytime based merely on the shift of political winds and still prevail.”
Judge Thomas Hardiman
Thomas Hardiman is 51 years old and has served as a judge since 2007. Hardiman graduated from University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University Law School. After earning his law degree, he worked as a litigator in Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh.
Other Facts:
- Of the three candidates, Judge Hardiman has been involved with the most intellectual property cases deciding 1 patent, 6 trademark, 5 copyright, and 3 trade secret matters
- He has built a reputation as a solidly, but not inflexibly, conservative judge
- He is the first person in his family to go to college, and he drove a cab to make ends meet
- Should he be chosen, he would be the only sitting justice who did not attend Harvard or Yale.
- Many years as a trial lawyer and trial judge, he has more experience trying cases than most of the other Supreme Court justices.
- Said to be well-liked by Maryanne Trump Barry, the president’s sister, a judge on the samePhiladelphia court.
- Notable quote: In a Second Amendment guns’ rights case, Hardiman wrote: “the threshold question in a Second Amendment challenge is one of scope: whether the Second Amendment protects the person, the weapon, or the activity in the first place. This,” he continued, “requires an inquiry into ‘text and history.’” He then found that “the most cogent principle that can be drawn from traditional limitations on the right to keep and bear arms is that dangerous persons likely to use firearms for illicit purposes were not understood to be protected by the Second Amendment.”
Judge William Pryor
At 54 years old, Judge Pryor is an Alabama-based judge who graduated from NortheastLouisiana University and Tulane University School of Law. His legal background consists of Commissioner, U.S. Sentencing Commission; Attorney General, Alabama; Deputy Attorney General, Alabama; and Law Clerk to Judge John M. Wisdom (5th Circuit).
Other Facts:
- In intellectual property matters, he has handled only 3 trademark cases and 3 copyright decisions as a judge
- Pryor once said Roe v. Wade is “the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.”
- While Judges Hardiman and Gorsuch were both confirmed without dissent, Pryor was blockedby Democrats and was only confirmed in a later deal.
- He has been a strong proponent of religious freedom and has advocated to allow different abortion policies in different states
- He would be the only member of the U.S. Supreme Court who did a stint as a politician
- With respect to LGBT rights was one where he joined in the majority to find that Georgia officials violated the equal protection clause when they fired an employee for being a transgender woman.
- Notable quote: “In his Poe v. Ullman dissent, which foreshadowed the recognition of the maritalright of privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut, Justice Harlan said that homosexual activity, even when “concealed in the home,” was a proper matter of state concern and could be forbidden by the States … Not only did Justice Harlan find no fundamental right to homosexual activity, he found a fundamental “pattern … deeply pressed into the substance of our social life” against such practice. Later in his dissenting opinion, Justice Harlan repeated his position “that adultery, homosexuality, fornication, and incest … however privately practiced” are subject to state proscription.”
Who will President Trump choose?
