Trump remaking the federal judicary

Lord Coke

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Say what you want but I am a active member of the Federalist Society and the organization as a whole is pretty happy in regards to Trumps judicial picks. We are in the process of remaking the federal judicary from the top down. It is a beautiful thing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/scalias-all-the-way-down-1507847435#comments_sector


Ask most Republicans to identify Donald Trump’s biggest triumph to date, and the answer comes quick: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. That’s the cramped view.

The media remains so caught up with the president’s tweets that it has missed Mr. Trump’s project to transform the rest of the federal judiciary. The president is stocking the courts with a class of brilliant young textualists bearing little relation to even their Reagan or Bush predecessors. Mr. Trump’s nastygrams to Bob Corker will be a distant memory next week. Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett’s influence on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could still be going strong 40 years from now.

Mr. Trump has now nominated nearly 60 judges, filling more vacancies than Barack Obama did in his entire first year. There are another 160 court openings, allowing Mr. Trump to flip or further consolidate conservative majorities on the circuit courts that have the final say on 99% of federal legal disputes.

This project is the work of Mr. Trump, White House Counsel Don McGahn and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Every new president cares about the judiciary, but no administration in memory has approached appointments with more purpose than this team.

Mr. Trump makes the decisions, though he’s taking cues from Mr. McGahn and his team. The Bushies preferred a committee approach: Dozens of advisers hunted for the least controversial nominee with the smallest paper trail. That helped get picks past a Senate filibuster, but it led to bland choices, or to ideological surprises like retired Justice David Souter.

Harry Reid’s 2013 decision to blow up the filibuster for judicial nominees has freed the Trump White House from having to worry about a Democratic veto during confirmation. Mr. McGahn’s team (loaded with former Clarence Thomas clerks) has carte blanche to work with outside groups like the Federalist Society to tap the most conservative judges.

Mr. McGahn has long been obsessed with constitutional law and the risks of an all-powerful administrative state. His crew isn’t subjecting candidates to 1980s-style litmus tests on issues like abortion. Instead the focus is on promoting jurists who understand the unique challenges of our big-government times. Can the prospective nominee read a statute? Does he or she defer to the government’s view of its own authority? The result has been a band of young rock stars and Scalia-style textualists like Ms. Barrett, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett and Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice David Stras.

Senate Republicans have so far blown their major agenda items, but they’ve remained unified on judges. They agreed to kill the Senate filibuster for Supreme Court nominees so as to confirm Justice Gorsuch; have confirmed six other judicial nominees; and stand ready to greenlight dozens more. This is a big shift from divisions the party had over the Bush 41 and Bush 43 nominees.

Because Mr. Trump’s picks have largely spent their careers focused on administrative law and constitutional questions, few have gotten bogged down by controversial cultural rulings. They do have paper trails, but mostly on serious and technical issues. This helps reassure Republicans even as it deprives Democrats of the fodder they’d need to stage dramatic opposition.

Conservatives praised Mr. McConnell last year for refusing to consider Judge Merrick Garland, whom Mr. Obama had nominated to the Supreme Court. Less well known is the sheer number of federal judgeships Mr. McConnell sat on as the Obama administration wound down. Mr. Trump took office with 107 lower-court vacancies, more than any of the past five presidents save Bill Clinton. The GOP challenge now is to break Democratic obstruction and get those posts filled.

Former Trump aide Steve Bannon is vowing to primary at least six GOP senators next year, saying he will support only candidates who refuse to back Mr. McConnell for another stint as leader. But Mr. Bannon’s claim that Mr. McConnell represents the “swamp” is lazy scapegoating. Yes, health-care reform failed—thanks to three showboating Republican senators. And yes, the House gets more done. But only the Senate is in the long-term personnel business.

The Trump judicial reset was never guaranteed. Mr. McConnell just happens to have a steely passion for remaking the judiciary. Previous majority leaders Trent Lott (best friends with trial lawyers) and Bill Frist (nice, nice) would never have gotten Justice Gorsuch confirmed. Those guys were the “establishment.”

Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Joni Ernst, Deb Fischer, Dan Sullivan, Cory Gardner, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton —this is the new generation of Republican senators. They were all elected in recent cycles. They are reformers, far removed from the earmarking, logrolling, crony, backroom days of washed-out Republicans who inspired the tea party.

The country has moved, as has Congress. The proof is in the extraordinary class of judicial nominees now coming through. Mr. Trump will keep baiting the media with shiny objects. In the background, government is being redone.
 
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Say what you want but I am a active member of the Federalist Society

Any thoughts on the majority of lawyers in the US thinking your society is a bunch of D-grade attorneys?
 
How is Gorusch his biggest win? It was literally impossible for him to fail at that. His golf scores take more effort.
 
As long as they nominate professional judges and not religious loonies with an agenda.

I would laugh my ass off if they manage to do something really damaging like overturning Roe v Wade or some shit like that.
 
Any thoughts on the majority of lawyers in the US thinking your society is a bunch of D-grade attorneys?

I overturned the City of Annapolis's ban on taser last year.
I recently had a Annapolis resident email me who had deterred a mugger with the Pulse taser she bought because of my lawsuit. That email told me i am on the right track.
 
I overturned the City of Annapolis's ban on taser last year.
I recently had a Annapolis resident email me who had deterred a mugger with the Pulse taser she bought because of my lawsuit. That email told me i am on the right track.

If you thought that legally, that email put you on the right track, then you should be able to deduce why the rest of the legal community rolls its collective eye at you.
 
Say what you will about fedsoc, but they provide some toptier free lunches to get students to populate the audience whenever they have a "distinguished guest" that people are unaccountably uninterested in.

In a more substantive response, Trump's "remaking" of the federal judiciary has mostly been nominating establishment hearthtrobs, some of whom are perfectly good jurists, peppered with hackish loons who have caught his eye.
 
If you thought that legally, that email put you on the right track, then you should be able to deduce why the rest of the legal community rolls its collective eye at you.

For your sake I hope you are trolling me right now.
 
Say what you will about fedsoc, but they provide some toptier free lunches to get students to populate the audience whenever they have a "distinguished guest" that people are unaccountably uninterested in.

In a more substantive response, Trump's "remaking" of the federal judiciary has mostly been nominating establishment hearthtrobs, some of whom are perfectly good jurists, peppered with hackish loons who have caught his eye.

They had a speaker when I was in law school describing abortion as the slavery of the 21st century. The content was shit, but the food was excellent. Half the people left in the middle after they finished eating.
 
I was wondering if you could provide a source for this claim ?

Of course he isn't going to have statistical data on that. But it's well-founded. The legal community, especially those who come from higher ranked law schools, are overwhelmingly left on the American spectrum (due less to policy beliefs, and more to understanding of the law and how incoherent the American right is with regard to law and policy). It was generally understood in law school that if you were a member of the Federalist Society, you were either an unintelligent rich kid paying full tuition or someone to whom law and policy were purely tribalism and gamesmanship (much like some on this board). Hell, we had like 15-20 involved in our school's chapter (of ~240 students) and not a single one of them was able to make it onto a journal....and we had four fucking journals.

Meanwhile, shit tier law schools have huge memberships and churn out right-wing lawyers like strains of cholera. Look up Matthew Hale, a member who later had his bar license revoked and was sent to prison after trying to assassinate a federal judge.
 
For your sake I hope you are trolling me right now.

No. It's retarded to take anecdotal evidence of someone being proud of gun ownership, while putting your head in the sand regarding the US having more gun deaths than any other developed nation. You aren't even making a legal argument. What am I supposed to refute?
 
Of course he isn't going to have statistical data on that. But it's well-founded. The legal community, especially those who come from higher ranked law schools, are overwhelmingly left on the American spectrum (due less to policy beliefs, and more to understanding of the law and how incoherent the American right is with regard to law and policy). It was generally understood in law school that if you were a member of the Federalist Society, you were either an unintelligent rich kid paying full tuition or someone to whom law and policy were purely tribalism and gamesmanship (much like some on this board). Hell, we had like 15-20 involved in our school's chapter (of ~240 students) and not a single one of them was able to make it onto a journal....and we had four fucking journals.
Meanwhile, shit tier law schools have huge memberships and churn out right-wing lawyers like strains of cholera. Look up Matthew Hale, a member who later had his bar license revoked and was sent to prison after trying to assassinate a federal judge.

So one persons assertion of what a majority of lawyers think about a topic is well founded because of your experience discussing this topic with overwhelmingly left leaning law students ?
It's interesting how quick leftists are to leap to the defense of virtually every group there is, and talk about confirmation bias, demand evidence, cite studies, etc. but when the topic becomes those who may disagree with them, anecdotal evidence and opinion will suffice.
They just KNOW they are smarter than others, and right to boot.
That's what I thought.
 
So one persons assertion of what a majority of lawyers think about a topic is well founded because of your experience discussing this topic with overwhelmingly left leaning law students ?
It's interesting how quick leftists are to leap to the defense of virtually every group there is, and talk about confirmation bias, demand evidence, cite studies, etc. but when the topic becomes those who may disagree with them, anecdotal evidence and opinion will suffice.
They just KNOW they are smarter than others, and right to boot.
That's what I thought.

If there were any basis to compile evidence on this topic, and evidence subsequently existed, I would cite to it. Given that there isn't, my experience in the profession is what I can give you.

I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings.
 
If there were any basis to compile evidence on this topic, and evidence subsequently existed, I would cite to it. Given that there isn't, my experience in the profession is what I can give you.

I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings.
You didn't hurt my feelings, but simply confirmed my suspicions. I appreciate your honesty.
 
but when the topic becomes those who may disagree with them, anecdotal evidence and opinion will suffice.

I specifically said that anecdotal evidence is shit.

And stop crying about partisanship. The entire point of the OP was cheerleading the idea of partisan appointments by Trump. Not a mention of their qualifications.
 
So one persons assertion of what a majority of lawyers think about a topic is well founded because of your experience discussing this topic with overwhelmingly left leaning law students ?
It's interesting how quick leftists are to leap to the defense of virtually every group there is, and talk about confirmation bias, demand evidence, cite studies, etc. but when the topic becomes those who may disagree with them, anecdotal evidence and opinion will suffice.
They just KNOW they are smarter than others, and right to boot.
That's what I thought.
The irony here is palpable.

Not only did you show that you weren't discussing the subject in good faith ("I was wondering" v "That's what I thought") your root argument is terrible.

. . . . and his anecdotal evidence is supported with data.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/msen/files/lawyers-ideologies.pdf.

Law as a profession tends to be to the left of american society generally, although they reflect, to a degree, the politics of their state. See page 15, 18. This is even more more pronounced at the elite legal institutions. See page 27, 28. The highest ranked elite legal institution that produces a proportionate number of conservative lawyers is Vanderbilt. It is barely in the top 20. There are talented conservative lawyers being produced by these schools (and there are talented lawyers being produced at less-prestigious institutions), but they are outnumbered. This is also reflected at the big law firms. See pages 35-38.


*also, attacking someone because they did x and some people with overlapping ideologies criticize x is moronic.
 
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