Conservatives feel happy about Trump’s Supreme Court options

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Conservatives’ wishes for the next Supreme Court justice boil down to a few words: no more Souters.

The reference is to former Justice David Souter, dubbed by a White House aide as a “home run” for conservatives when he was nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 to replace the liberal William Brennan.

As it turned out, Souter generally was a liberal vote for most of his 18 years on the court.

But conservatives who care about the court say they have no such worry this time around. They feel confident that whomever President Donald Trump nominates for the Supreme Court, they won’t be looking back with regret in the years to come.

The leading contenders from a list of 21 names Trump rolled out during his campaign are three federal appeals courts judges who have met with Trump: Neil Gorsuch, Thomas Hardiman and William Pryor, according to a person who is familiar with the process. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss about internal decisions.

Trump said he plans to announce his choice Thursday, and told Fox News that he has basically settled on a nominee, “subject to change at the last moment.”

“They all would be excellent, excellent choices. They were all specifically chosen with the president’s commitment in mind” to choose a justice who would be similar to Antonin Scalia, who died nearly a year ago, said Carrie Severino, a conservative activist and former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.

That has not always been the case when Republican presidents have had a chance to leave their mark on the court.

Souter was one of five justices put on the nine-member court by Republican presidents over a 12-year span. While the court moved to the right in that period, it did not become the conservative bulwark those presidents hoped for.

The court’s 1992 decision reaffirming the right to an abortion, for which Souter wrote the majority opinion along with Reagan appointees Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, was an enormous disappointment to abortion opponents who had thought they had a court majority to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Usually less than a quarter of the court’s cases end up with liberals and conservatives on opposite sides, but those are the ones, including abortion, gay rights and guns, that people care most about, said the John Malcolm of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Gorsuch, Hardiman and Pryor have been judges for 10 years or longer, and have the paper trail that Souter lacked.