On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced 11 potential Supreme Court picks. The list includes Steven Colloton, Allison Eid, Raymond Gruender, Thomas Hardiman, Raymond Kethledge, Joan Larsen, Thomas Lee, William Pryor, David Stras, Diane Sykes, and Don Willett.
One can expect that most of these judges will disagree with Trump on some major constitutional issues, namely eminent domain.
Justice Willett, an ardent defender of liberty in Texas, is one example. In his opinion for the majority in Texas Rice Land Partners, Ltd. v. Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC, he wrote that, “[e]ven when the Legislature grants certain private entities ‘the right and power of eminent domain,’ the overarching constitutional rule controls: no taking of property for private use.” Willett has also blasted the opinion in Kelo v. City of New London, in which the Supreme Court ruled eminent domain could be used to transfer property to a private owner.
Stras, Eid, and Lee also clerked for Justice Thomas, who dissented in Kelo.
“Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not,” Thomas wrote.
However, Trump famously took elderly widow Vera Coking of Atlantic City to court so he could take her house by use of eminent domain and build a parking lot for his limos. The Superior Court of New Jersey ultimately ruled against him. He has also called eminent domain for private use “wonderful.”
THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s John McCormack asked Trump in February whether he would appoint justices who believed his view of eminent domain was unconstitutional. Trump didn’t answer, but defended his view of eminent domain.
As Professor Jonathan Adler explains, more conservative and originalist judges will generally disagree with Trump’s stance on eminent domain. The same is true of the First Amendment—Trump has said he would “open up” libel laws.
Trump is also a man understood to never take “no” for an answer, including the time it came to his failed attempt to take Coking’s home. That approach may have served him well often in business, but it won’t—or, at least, ought not—work in government. Among the duties of the Supreme Court is to tell the president “no” when he acts unconstitutionally.
As Professor Randy E. Barnett has said, “What makes us think that a President Trump would appoint a justice who would stand up to him? That’s just not the type of person he is.”
