Law The Search For The 113th Supreme Court Justice, v2: President Trump Nominates Judge Neil Gorsuch

Trump on Supreme Court pick: 'I think in my mind I know who it is'
By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter
January 19, 2017

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President-elect Donald Trump suggested to an audience on Thursday that he has a good sense of who he plans to nominate to the Supreme Court.

"I think in my mind I know who it is," he said at a leadership luncheon at his hotel in downtown Washington, according to cell phone video of the event obtained by CNN. "I think you're going to be very, very excited."

Trump said he would be submitting a name from a list of 20 that he put out during the campaign.

"I put out the list of 20, all highly responsible and highly talented, very talented judges ... Replacing somebody that was somebody I had great respect for as an intellect, Justice (Antonin) Scalia," Trump said.

The announcement will come "within two to three" weeks after the start of his administration," he said.

Judge William H. Pryor and Judge Diane Sykes are widely considered at the top of his list, largely because Trump brought their names up during the campaign.

Thursday's luncheon was briefly open to the press; Trump's comments regarding the Supreme Court justice came after pool reporters were led out of the room.

Trump also met briefly Thursday at Blair House with Chief Justice John Roberts, who will administer the oath of office Friday.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/19/politics/trump-supreme-court-nominee/
 
A Look at Diane Sykes, Possible Trump SCOTUS Nominee

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Diane S. Sykes
7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Age: 58

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice

Sykes, who was born and grew up in Milwaukee, became a justice of the state’s Supreme Court in 1999, when the governor appointed her to fill a midterm vacancy. The next year, Sykes was elected to a full 10-year term, which she served until she was commissioned for her current role on the 7th Circuit court in 2004.

Sykes once described herself as an “originalist-textualist.”

“It’s really important when we’re writing our opinions to be transparent about what our decision method in the case is and how we get from Point A to B to C in the analysis,” she said in 2014 at a State Bar of Wisconsin annual meeting.

Before serving on the state Supreme Court, Sykes was a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court bench for seven years. She has two sons. Her former husband, conservative Wisconsin radio host Charlie Sykes, posted on Twitter that she would make a great justice but added that he doesn’t support Trump. (He’s an outspoken opponent of the president-elect.)

Confirmation

In 2008, Sykes was mentioned as a possible nominee to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush. Five years earlier, he had nominated Sykes to the Chicago-based 7th Circuit court, which has jurisdiction over areas of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. The U.S. Senate then confirmed her federal appointment in 2004, in a 70-27 vote, with the support of Wisconsin’s two Democratic senators at the time, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, according to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

Reproductive Rights

As a federal judge in 2013, Sykes wrote an opinion in Korte v. Sebelius, whichruled in favor of employers in the fight over the Affordable Health Care Act’s contraceptive mandate that requires companies to cover some contraceptive costs in their health insurance plans. On SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston called the decision “the broadest ruling so far by a federal appeals court barring enforcement of the birth-control mandate in the new federal health care law.”

At an event hosted by the conservative Federalist Society just shortly after the ruling, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker called Sykes “one of our favorite jurists” and joked about appointing her to the Supreme Court if he became president. (He briefly was a presidential contender in 2016.)

LGBT Rights

In 2006, the Christian Legal Society v. Walker case involved a religious student group and Southern Illinois University’s School of Law. The dean said the group’s membership policies, which bar those who engage in or affirm gay conduct, violate the university’s nondiscrimination policies. The group sued the university for violating its First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights.

In court, Sykes said the group didn’t violate the university’s affirmative action policy and has a constitutional right to continue receiving government subsidies. “Subsidized student organizations at public universities are engaged in private speech, not spreading state-endorsed messages,” she wrote.

First Amendment

Sykes played a role in advancing the First Amendment right to record police. In the majority opinion in American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois v. Anita Alvarez in 2012, she declared as unconstitutional an Illinois state law making recording police officers on-duty and in public a felony offense. The law, considered one of the harshest eavesdropping measures in the country, “restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests” and “likely violates the First Amendment’s free speech and free press guarantees,” Sykes said.

Voting Rights

In Frank v. Walker, Sykes and two other Republican judges in August ruled that a Wisconsin voter ID law requiring nearly all voters to present approved photo identification to cast a ballot was constitutional. Opponents of such laws, often favored by conservative legislators as a means to fight voter fraud, view the measures as voter suppression.

Second Amendment

In a post on its website in 2011, the National Rifle Association suggested that readers “put her on your Supreme Court shortlist for the next Republican administration” because of the unanimous opinion she wrote in Ezell v. City of Chicago. In the majority opinion, she held that firing ranges are protected under the Second Amendment, and she granted a preliminary injunction against Chicago’s ban on firing ranges inside city limits.

What the Right Is Saying

Speaking on Meet the Press in February, Trump said, “I think we have some great people out there. Diane Sykes from Wisconsin, from what everybody tells me, would be outstanding. We need a conservative person.”

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, tells Newsweek Sykes “is seen as one of the rock stars on the list.” Her nomination, he adds, “would be extremely well received by constitutional conservatives.”

He highlights her decisions related to the First and Second amendments, including Christian Legal Society v. Walker and Ezell v. City of Chicago, respectively. In the Christian Legal Society case, he says, “the left likes to construe this as something other than what they are, which is the right of individuals in groups to worship and pursue their views as they see fit to truly exercise their religions. The left would have you believe that the free exercise of religion is limited to the right to go to church on Sundays.” But it’s about Americans exercising their religious freedom all week, he says.

What the Left Is Saying

Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American Way, says Sykes is a “far-right” judicial activist. “Her record shows she’s willing to put women’s lives at risk to further her personal ideology,” she says.

“She’s also undermined principles fundamental to our Constitution throughout her career,” Baker continues. “For instance, she was the sole dissent in a case reversing a conviction because a juror did not understand English, and she ruled that a group that violated a campus ban on anti-gay bias was still entitled to government funding, a view later rejected by the Supreme Court. She should not sit on the Supreme Court.”

http://www.newsweek.com/profile-diane-sykes-trumps-possible-scotus-nominee-531588


Sounds good on the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
 
Sure, no one's making you, least of all me.

Actually the key objective measure is not time. That, again, is a subjective opinion. There is no objective rule that says time is the measure we should use. Time is objective, that it is the measure for evaluating this issue is subjective.

Additionally, your second point is objectively wrong. The Constitution only requires 1 Supreme Court judge, so only having 8 isn't actually harmful except by a subjective standard (that standard being "how many judges we should have?").

You're going to take this the wrong way but you really don't understand the difference between subjective opinions and objective ones.

I'm not lecturing you on the amendment process. I'm referring to the judicial process. You're right that it's not relevant. More importantly to me, I doubt that you would acknowledge that the Founding Fathers were largely lawyers, familiar with precedent and how it operates, yet still chose to create a judiciary for the interpretation and ruling on of issues related to the Constitution. All that and yet they didn't ban common law or precedent setting opinions in the Constitution.

Can you link to your posts on this subject when Scalia died and Republicans were intending to block Obama's appointments? I'd like to see if you're a hypocrite or not.

Please.
 
Can you link to your posts on this subject when Scalia died and Republicans were intending to block Obama's appointments? I'd like to see if you're a hypocrite or not.

Please.

You can search them but I'll save you the trouble since these are 2 different points.

My position when Scalia died is that a hearing should occur. My position in this thread is that if you felt that blocking the hearings in the past was reasonable then you should feel that blocking them now is also reasonable.

They are not addressing the same point. The first position is my personal position on the hearing process itself. The second position on if either part has a moral advantage in denying a hearing to the other side. I disagree with delaying hearings personally but once one party has made that part of their process, I can't fault the other party from copying that behavior.
 
You can search them but I'll save you the trouble since these are 2 different points.

My position when Scalia died is that a hearing should occur. My position in this thread is that if you felt that blocking the hearings in the past was reasonable then you should feel that blocking them now is also reasonable.

They are not addressing the same point. The first position is my personal position on the hearing process itself. The second position on if either part has a moral advantage in denying hearing the other side. I disagree with delaying hearings personally but once one party has made that part of their process, I can't fault the other party from copying that behavior.

Your word there is fine. Do you still think the hearings should occur now to the end that a right-leaning judge gets on the bench?
 
That's fine. Your word there is fine. Do you still think the hearings should occur now to the end that a right-leaning judge gets on the bench?

At this point, I'm indifferent.

My original point of concern was the delaying hearings for partisan reasons creates a moral vacuum that then justifies any future partisan argument.

Once we crossed that point, I stopped advocating in either direction because I don't think there's a right answer anymore. Let me explain - if I say that the Dem's should grant a hearing then I'm implicitly supporting the GOP's delay. I'm granting them their ends despite disagreeing with their means.

If I say say that the Dem's should delay hearings for their own partisan reasons then I'm explicitly supporting the type of gamesmanship I disagree with.

For me to be consistent, I've stopped having an opinion on what the Dem's should actually do. No matter what they do, I'm going to disagree with it.
 
At this point, I'm indifferent.

My original point of concern was the delaying hearings for partisan reasons creates a moral vacuum that then justifies any future partisan argument.

Once we crossed that point, I stopped advocating in either direction because I don't think there's a right answer anymore. Let me explain - if I say that the Dem's should grant a hearing then I'm implicitly supporting the GOP's delay. I'm granting them their ends despite disagreeing with their means.

If I say say that the Dem's should delay hearings for their own partisan reasons then I'm explicitly supporting the type of gamesmanship I disagree with.

For me to be consistent, I've stopped having an opinion on what the Dem's should actually do. No matter what they do, I'm going to disagree with it.

Noted. I can appreciate that.
 
What? That two wrongs lead to indifference? :D

Hmm, yeah. Let me go around back to this...

At this point, I'm indifferent.

Once we crossed that point, I stopped advocating in either direction because I don't think there's a right answer anymore. Let me explain - if I say that the Dem's should grant a hearing then I'm implicitly supporting the GOP's delay.

This isn't a problem about your position's inferred meaning, its about your actual one.

You disagreed with the GOP's delay of a hearing, but you're saying that you don't disagree with the D's delaying a hearing ...because someone may infer something incorrectly about your principled position?
 
Hmm, yeah. Let me go around back to this...



This isn't a problem about your position's inferred meaning, its about your actual one.

You disagreed with the GOP's delay of a hearing, but you're saying that you don't disagree with the D's delaying a hearing ...because someone may infer something incorrectly about your principled position?

The problem here is that I never said I didn't disagree with the D's delaying a hearing. I said that I don't think I could agree with either choice because they would both contradict my principled position.

Additionally, I've said that the Dem's have the same moral authority for their partisan delays as the GOP had for theirs.

I only explained my personal position because you asked, not because I'm worried about what you or someone else might infer from it.
 
ROFL! They don't have the votes!

To make it all more fun, the rule change (by the Democrats) makes it a walk for whoever he may choose.

Ted Cruz would be a fine pick.
 
The problem here is that I never said I didn't disagree with the D's delaying a hearing. I said that I don't think I could agree with either choice because they would both contradict my principled position.

Additionally, I've said that the Dem's have the same moral authority for their partisan delays as the GOP had for theirs.

I only explained my personal position because you asked, not because I'm worried about what you or someone else might infer from it.

Forgive the feeling of an inquisition here. I'm just trying to get this straightened out. You mentioned that you were hesitant to declare that the D's shouldn't delay a hearing because you were concerned how that could be inferred (what it may look like you were implying) as support for the GOP's delay. But that's not the case unless someone actually inferred it.

That reads like you care about someone's inference...

Anyway, outside of a wrong inference, if your principled position was that the R's shouldn't delay the vote, again why shouldn't you also hold that the D's shouldn't delay? (That's the most unclear part).

Edit: Also you said that the Dems have the same "moral authority" for their delays as the GOP. Well if you disagree with the GOP's delay then you must also think that the Dem's have zero moral authority, right?
 
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Forgive the feeling of an inquisition here. I'm just trying to get this straightened out. You mentioned that you were hesitant to declare that the D's shouldn't delay a hearing because you were concerned how that could be inferred (what it may look like you were implying) as support for the GOP's delay. But that's not the case unless someone actually inferred it.

That reads like you care about someone's inference...

Anyway, outside of a wrong inference, if your principled position was that the R's shouldn't delay the vote, again why shouldn't you also hold that the D's shouldn't delay? (That's the most unclear part).

No, I'm not hesitant to declare anything. And I'm not concerned about what could be inferred.

My position is that advocating for a hearing implicitly supports delays by rewarding them. Whether or not anyone else reaches the same conclusion is irrelevant to me. I'm explaining it to you but if you'd never asked it wouldn't change my opinion.

Additionally, advocating a delay explicitly supports delays. So, either I implicitly support delays or I explicitly support them. I find both positions unacceptable to me. It's irrelevant what conclusions others draw from that.

As for the R's delay vs. D's delay. If I disagree with theft and I know someone is stealing - should I buy the stolen goods from them? By buying the stolen goods, I've rewarded them for stealing.

In this case, I disagreed with the delay but the reason for the delay was to get a better chance of a hearing in their favor. If they're granted said hearing then they would have been rewarded for their delay. It's the same as buying the stolen goods. So I can't really condone rewarding them for stealing. Any more than I can condone the initial wrong act.
 
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No, I'm not hesitant to declare anything. And I'm not concerned about what could be inferred.

My position is that advocating for a hearing implicitly supports delays by rewarding them. Whether or not anyone else reaches the same conclusion is irrelevant to me. I'm explaining it to you but if you'd never asked it wouldn't change my opinion.

Additionally, advocating a hearing explicitly supports delays. So, either I implicitly support delays or I explicitly support them. I find both positions unacceptable to me. It's irrelevant what conclusions others draw from that.

As for the R's delay vs. D's delay. If I disagree with theft and I know someone is stealing - should I buy the stolen goods from them? By buying the stolen goods, I've rewarded them for stealing.

In this case, I disagreed with the delay but the reason for the delay was to get a better chance of a hearing in their favor. If they're granted said hearing then they would have been rewarded for their delay. It's the same as buying the stolen goods. So I can't really condone rewarding them for stealing. Any more than I can condone the initial wrong act.

Well first of all, if you disagree with theft then why are you a statist? I had to get that out of the way
(low hanging fruit).

Anyway, OK. I can see your reasoning here actually (for the second time). Thank you taking the time to elaborate.
 
Edit: Also you said that the Dems have the same "moral authority" for their delays as the GOP. Well if you disagree with the GOP's delay then you must also think that the Dem's have zero moral authority, right?

I answered this many posts ago. I said that once the initial delay occurred we entered a phase where no one has a moral argument against delay.
 
I answered this many posts ago. I said that once the initial delay occurred we entered a phase where no one has a moral argument against delay.

Yeah I got you. I was getting caught up on the inference part. Your reasoning is noted. The theft analogy read like a good one that clarified what you were saying a bit better.
 
Yeah I got you. I was getting caught up on the inference part. Your reasoning is noted. The theft analogy read like a good one that clarified what you were saying a bit better.

No problem.

I find the whole thing a moral quandary.
 
Anyway, OK. I can see your reasoning here actually (for the second time). Thank you taking the time to elaborate.

He justifies his current ambivalence by saying the D's are just doing what the R's did. Are you satisfied when he completely dismisses (what I consider to be) key differences? One being that when Scalia passed the nation was neck-deep in choosing the new person for the office that's integral to selecting his replacement. The other being the element of time (i.e.suspending the decision six months in observance of a significant event vs. holding out indefinitely)? Are the D's gonna hold out four years? Eight? That seems more like escalating the questionable behavior as opposed to mere mimicry.
 
He justifies his current ambivalence by saying the D's are just doing what the R's did. Are you satisfied when he completely dismisses (what I consider to be) key differences? One being that when Scalia passed the nation was neck-deep in choosing the new person for the office that's integral to selecting his replacement. The other being the element of time (i.e.suspending the decision six months in observance of a significant event vs. holding out indefinitely)? Are the D's gonna hold out four years? Eight? That seems more like escalating the questionable behavior as opposed to mere mimicry.

Look, I for one want nothing to do with the Dem's having a snowflake's chance in hell at signing off on obviously unconstitutional challenges to the 1st, 2nd, or 4th Amendment issues. Just from a principled position of upholding individual rights, which Dem's have been the enemies of for the last eight years, I don't want them anywhere near that SCOTUS bench. And from a Machiavellian approach I think its great that the GOP was successful, and I hope the Dem's efforts get railroaded.

BUT...

His reasoning makes sense to me, at least immediately. I'll try to take a stab at this from his perspective. I was approaching it by looking at the two transgressions (the GOP delaying and the Dem's delaying a hearing) as two independent events. With that in mind, if you're going to call bullshit on one then it stands to reason that you should be consistent and condemn the other. I think that's true, if the two events didn't accompany each other in sequence.

The GOP was obviously going to try and hold out from having to hear and confirm any Democratically appointed justice as long as they possibly could. In the end they got exactly what wanted, which predicated the situation the representatives now find themselves in. As Pan put it, we're effectively dealing with "stolen goods" here. With that in mind I can understand his resistance to overtly condemn the Dem's efforts to block the hearings, which the GOP earned illegitimately (that's if we're going to declare their delay illegitimate though).

Edit: If you have a counter, I'm all eyeballs. Should the fact that the delays are causally linked change the approach to the moral judgment of each? In other words, is the whole circumstance more than the sum of its parts? I don't know...
 
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Look, I for one want nothing to do with the Dem's having a snowflake's chance in hell at signing off on obviously unconstitutional challenges to the 1st, 2nd, or 4th Amendment issues. Just from a principled position of upholding individual rights, which Dem's have been the enemies of for the last eight years, I don't want them anywhere near that SCOTUS bench. And from a Machiavellian approach I think its great that the GOP was successful, and I hope the Dem's efforts get railroaded.

BUT...

His reasoning makes sense to me, at least immediately. I'll try to take a stab at this from his perspective. I was approaching it by looking at the two transgressions (the GOP delaying and the Dem's delaying a hearing) as two independent events. With that in mind, if you're going to call bullshit on one then it stands to reason that you should be consistent and condemn the other. I think that's true, if the two events didn't accompany each other in sequence.

The GOP was obviously going to try and hold out from having to hear and confirm any Democratically appointed justice as long as they possibly could. In the end they got exactly what wanted, which predicated the situation the representatives now find themselves in. As Pan put it, we're effectively dealing with "stolen goods" here. With that in mind I can understand his resistance to overtly condemn the Dem's efforts to block the hearings, which the GOP earned illegitimately (that's if we're going to declare their delay illegitimate though).

Edit: If you have a counter, I'm all eyeballs. Should the fact that the delays are causally linked change the approach to the moral judgment of each? In other words, is the whole circumstance more than the sum of its parts? I don't know...

Not sure how your first paragraph is relevant. One could flip-flop the players and conduct the same analysis. If you're simply expressing neutrality then cool.

The rest of your post, which I thank you for, doesn't really touch on the differences I outlined. I'm asking if you consider them insignificant and why.

As for linkage, one group is using the behavior of the other group (that they condemned at the time) as an excuse to behave similarly now. Sounds like hypocrisy, spite, sour grapes, and dereliction of duty. Personally I thought R's should have given Garland a hearing. They chose not to and based that on the election in progress. Had Hilary won I've no reason to believe they would have held out until they finally did win the Presidency. And at that time her victory looked probable. So what is the stated goal/plan of the D's now? I've asked before in this thread and didn't see a response. Maybe I'm misunderstanding and I'd love to hear how they want to resolve things (as opposed to an indefinite 8-man SCOTUS).

Funny thing is last night I reconsidered that an even number of justices might be a good thing in that it'll take a two-judge majority to render a decision. And if it's a tie then the court can get back to it later, rather than setting a precedent in stone with a 5-4 vote. That still wouldn't change my mind that the D's should man up and help get someone selected. And on the other-hand it's takes a fuckton of effort and money to bring a case to SCOTUS. Seems like those people deserve a decision, one way or the other.
 
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