You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition - December 23, 2016

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Trump Administration (first term)

President Donald Trump
Vice President Mike Pence
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Polling indexes: Opinion polling during the Trump administration

This is the December 23, 2016, edition of a daily email sent from November 2016 to September 2017 that covered Donald Trump's presidential transition team, potential cabinet appointees, and the different policy positions of those individuals who may have had an effect on the new administration. Previous editions of "You're Hired" can be found here.

Who will Trump pick for the Supreme Court?

With most of the media’s attention, as of late, focused on Trump’s nominations for cabinet positions, one nomination has largely been left by the wayside: Trump’s nominee to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

Scalia died unexpectedly in February 2016 after three decades on the court. President Obama nominated appeals court judge Merrick Garland as his successor. After months of opposition in the Senate and Trump’s victory in November, Garland this month returned to his job as chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (Officially, Garland’s nomination is still pending.) The vacancy on the court was a political lightning rod throughout the 2016 campaign, often serving as a key motivator for Republican and Democratic voters alike. In fact, according to an NBC News exit poll conducted on election day, 7 in 10 voters said Supreme Court appointments were either an important factor or the most important factor in determining which presidential candidate they supported.

Trump has said he intends to appoint a justice with a judicial philosophy comparable to Scalia’s, which would return the court to the ideological balance that has characterized it for the past several years—with four liberal justices, four conservative justices, and one justice more-or-less in the middle (Anthony Kennedy). Scalia was one of the court’s four conservative justices. Since his death, the liberal wing of the court has had a slight advantage. When joined by Kennedy, they overrule the conservatives 5-3. When Kennedy sides with the conservatives, on the other hand, there is a 4-4 split, which means the decision of the lower-court is affirmed and no national precedent is established (this happened four times in the court’s 2015-2016 term). As Carrie Severino, the chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, told The New Yorker, “Losing Justice Scalia on the Court created a one-way ratchet, making it so much easier to move in a liberal direction. Every time Kennedy joined the conservatives, there was just a tie, and no real precedent was made. But when Kennedy joined the liberals they could set binding precedent.” For a list of cases decided by the court after Scalia’s death, see here.

Trump’s pick for chief of staff, Reince Priebus, has recently said that Trump will announce his nominee closer to the date of his inauguration on January 20, 2017. “Obviously, I think that's going to be something that we're going to start after the new year, and certainly by the time we get to inauguration, either shortly before or shortly thereafter,” said Priebus. He added that age will be an important factor in Trump’s decision: “Well, I tend to believe younger is better, too, but I can tell you what the president believes is that the most qualified, best person to serve on the Supreme Court is what's most important. And so, but certainly longevity's a factor, but it's just a factor. Competence and having the best possible person nominated is what's most important.”

See also: Fact check/Will three Supreme Court justices be past the court's average retirement age on election day?

So, who’s on Trump’s list? The president-elect released two lists while still a candidate, one in May 2016 and another in September 2016. Combined, the lists include 21 names. They are listed below in alphabetical order along with their current employment status. Click the links to learn more about them. Conservative organizations such as The Federalist Society and The Heritage Foundation assisted Trump in creating the lists. Shortly after the November 8 election, it was rumoured that Trump was considering Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), his former rival for the Republican nomination, as a potential nominee. Later, however, Trump’s team said that he intended to select a nominee from the 21 names floated during the campaign.