Donald Trump. (Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons)
President Donald Trump will announce a batch of conservative federal judicial nominees on Monday, the New York Times reported Sunday night.
The nominations, which begin a push to reshape the federal bench, are expected to include picks for five federal circuit court seats, four federal district court vacancies and an appointment to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
They are mainly to courts in conservative states and regions, possibly to avoid triggering confirmation battles that would delay the president’s early judicial nominees. Two of Trump’s circuit court selections had been names on his list of possible Supreme Court nominees; two of the district court picks, David Nye in Idaho and Scott Palk in Oklahoma, were originally nominated by President Barack Obama but never confirmed.
White House Counsel Donald McGahn II told the New York Times that Trump has been guided his selections by a campaign pledge to “appoint strong and principled jurists to the federal bench who will enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power and protect the liberty of all Americans.”
Trump’s first nominee to a federal circuit court, U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar, had his Senate confirmation hearing in late April. Thapar, who sits in the Eastern District of Kentucky, would fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, if confirmed.
Here are the individuals expected to be nominated Monday to federal court seats, according to the Times report.
Nominee: Amy Coney Barrett
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Current job: Law professor, University of Notre Dame
Barrett, a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia clerk, teaches federal procedure, constitutional law and statutory interpretation at Notre Dame. In a 2017 paper, Barrett addressed the concept of judicial restraint, writing: “A faithful judge resists the temptation to conflate the meaning of the Constitution with the judge’s own political preference; judges who give into that temptation exceed the limits of their power by holding a statute unconstitutional when it is not.”
Nominee: John K. Bush
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Current job: Partner, Bingham Greenebaum Doll
Bush, co-chair of the litigation department at Louisville’s Bingham Greenebaum Doll, specializes in complex litigation, including antitrust, securities, insurance, IP and product liability, according to his law firm bio. He is president of the Louisville Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society and a member of the Sixth Circuit’s advisory council on rules. Bush, who started his career at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., was an attorney to President Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra investigation.
Nominee: Joan Larsen
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Current job: Justice on the Michigan Supreme Court
Larsen, another former Scalia clerk, was named to the Michigan Supreme Court by Gov. Rick Snyder in September 2015. She worked in the George W. Bush Department of Justice from 2002 to 2003 and then joined the University of Michigan School of Law as an adjunct professor and special counsel to the dean. Larsen was one of the judges on a list of 21 potential nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court that Trump released before his election.
Nominee: Kevin Newsom
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Current job: Partner, Bradley Arant Boult
Newsom, a former clerk to Justice David Souter and Alabama’s former solicitor general, is an appellate lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama. In a 2011 interview, Newsom told the National Law Journal’s Tony Mauro that lawyers should write conversationally. “I think within the boundaries of decorum, legal briefs out to be fun,” he said. “If briefs are an instrument, a tool, to win, you’ve got to keep the judge interested,” he added.
Nominee: David Stras
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
Current job: Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court
Stras, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, has been an associate justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court since 2010. Like Larsen, Stras was on Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees. He previously taught at the University of Minnesota Law School and practiced law at Sidley Austin from 2001 to 2002.
Nominee: Damien Schiff
Court: U.S. Court of Federal Claims
Current job: Senior attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
As an attorney for the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, Schiff specializes in environmental and land-use issues, according to his bio. He clerked at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which is authorized to hear financial claims against the U.S. government. Judges are nominated by the president and confirmed to terms of 15 years. Speaking in San Mateo, California last year, Schiff emphasized the importance of protecting private property in taking cases. “A threat to property anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere,” he said, according to prepared remarks.
Nominee: Dabney Friedrich
Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Current job: Former member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission
Friedrich, who served as an associate White House under President George W. Bush, completed a 10-year term on the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 2016. She was previously counsel to Sen. Orrin Hatch and served as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of California and in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Nominee: Terry Moorer
Court: U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama
Current job: Magistrate judge in the Middle District of Alabama
Prior to his appointment as a magistrate judge in 2007, Moorer spent nearly 17 years as a federal prosecutor in the Middle District of Alabama. He served as a military lawyer and judge for the Alabama National Guard and was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait as command judge advocate.
Nominee: David Nye
Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho
Current job: Judge on the Sixth District Court of Idaho
Nye, a state judge in Idado, was nominated for a federal judgeship by Barack Obama in April 2016. He was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee but didn’t receive a vote from the full Senate. He previously worked for the Pocatello, Idaho law firm Merill & Merill.
Nominee: Scott Palk
Court: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma
Current job: Assistant dean, University of Oklahoma College of Law
Palk, who was nominated to the federal bench by Barack Obama in late 2015, was a DA and a federal prosecutor before moving into academia in 2011, according to his law school bio. He served as deputy criminal chief in the U.S. attorney’s office in Oklahoma City and helped coordinate the prosecutions of violent crime and national security cases.
Contact Vanessa Blum at [email protected]. On Twitter: @vanessablum
