For a very important, newly opening federal judicial seat, the best possible nominee is the principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, Jeff Wall.
Wall, who on just Wednesday was arguing the Trump administration’s position at the Supreme Court in a key abortion-related case out of Louisiana, ought to be an obvious contender for the spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Right now, he isn’t yet being mentioned among the front-runners, but that should change. His resume and demeanor are right out of central casting for the position being vacated by Judge Thomas Griffith, who announced March 5 that he would retire.
Wall, who grew up in a blue-collar family in a small town in Georgia, earned his way to degrees at two prestigious universities: a bachelor’s from Georgetown University and a juris doctorate from the University of Chicago. He clerked for prominent, moderate-conservative judge J. Harvey Wilkinson III of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (and married Wilkinson’s daughter) and then for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He was a nonpolitical appointee as an assistant solicitor general for five years under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
During the early Obama years, his boss was Elena Kagan, now a Supreme Court justice. They reportedly got along well personally and professionally, despite their differing legal philosophies. This is important.
The D.C. Circuit is known colloquially as “the second most important court in the land” because so many key cases go through it before reaching the Supreme Court. While Kagan is a liberal, she is one of the two among the “liberal bloc” (Stephen Breyer is the other) who are most likely to join conservatives in complicated cases where some legal issues break less clearly along ideological lines. Conservatives hoping to attract Kagan’s acquiescence in such cases need to know how she thinks: what sorts of arguments appeal to her and what sort of legal questions she will want answered. It would help conservatives immensely to have a judge on the D.C. Circuit who can anticipate Kagan’s concerns and incorporate good answers to them within the circuit’s decisions.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Wall and Thomas, also a native of Georgia, continue to have a warm relationship as well.
Wall hasn’t spent his whole professional life in government, however. He also spent four years as co-head of the appellate litigation practice at the highly regarded firm Sullivan & Cromwell. There, and at the solicitor’s office, he has handled a vast array of legal subject areas and argued well over a dozen cases before the Supreme Court. One of his biggest victories, a huge win for religious liberty, was the famous Maryland “peace cross” case, in which the court ruled that a 40-foot cross serving as a memorial to soldiers who died in World War I could remain on state property. Significantly, Kagan (and Breyer) joined the conservatives in the 7-2 majority (albeit on narrower grounds than the conservatives did).
Known as both brilliant and extremely congenial, Wall has just the right personality, outlook, and wisdom for the D.C. Circuit. As paraphrased in a 2018 feature published by the University of Chicago Law School, Wall feels “a duty … to model civilized, reasoned discourse.” He is thus a solid conservative who also would be readily confirmable even as Senate tensions rise in an election year.
The message to President Trump, then, should be that what he needs for the D.C. Circuit, to protect the Constitution, is to build a Wall.
