Just a reminder of the folks whom President-elect Donald Trump has identified as possible candidates for a Supreme Court nomination.
In May, Trump issued a list of eleven names—a list that he said was “representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value” and was something he would “use … as a guide.” These were the names on that list:
Steven Colloton, Eighth Circuit
Allison Eid, Colorado supreme court
Raymond Gruender, Eighth Circuit
Thomas Hardiman, Third Circuit
Raymond Kethledge, Sixth Circuit
Joan Larsen, Michigan supreme court
Thomas Lee, Utah supreme court
William Pryor, Eleventh Circuit
David Stras, Minnesota supreme court
Diane Sykes, Seventh Circuit
Don Willett, Texas supreme court
In September, Trump added ten more names to his list, in this (un-alphabetical) order:
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah
Neil Gorsuch, Tenth Circuit
Margaret Ryan, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
Edward Mansfield, Iowa supreme court
Keith Blackwell, Georgia supreme court
Charles Canady, Florida supreme court
Timothy Tymkovich, Tenth Circuit
Amul Thapar, Eastern District of Kentucky
Federico Moreno, Southern District of Florida
Robert Young, Michigan supreme court
Whether Trump now commits to pick his nominees from the full list of 21 or instead to “use [the list] as a guide” is unclear to me. I assume that the list does not have an unlimited shelf life. On issuing this supplement, Trump said that the combined list “is definitive and I will choose only from it in picking future justices of the United States Supreme Court.”
For what it’s worth, the list includes plenty of folks of whom I think very highly and others I’m not familiar with. There are also some folks not on the list who would be high on my own list.
