Who are Trump’s top contenders?
WASHINGTON» President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nomination is expected Monday, with three federal judges leading the pack. Here’s a look at who they are (plus three more who haven’t been counted out yet):
Amy Coney Barrett
Barrett, 46, was a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and a longtime Notre Dame Law School professor who became a federal judge last fall.
If nominated and confirmed, she would become the fourth female justice on the nine-member court and its youngest member (Denver native Neil Gorsuch is now the youngest, turning 51 this August.)
Barrett is considered Trump’s most divisive choice, because of her sparse record on the bench and because of her conservative religious views.
At a Senate hearing last year on her nomination to the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Democrats peppered Barrett on whether her Roman Catholic faith would interfere with her work. Democrats cited a 1998 paper in which she argued that Catholic judges might need to recuse themselves in death penalty cases.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California told Barrett that dogma and law are different things and she was concerned “that the dogma lives loudly within you.” Barrett eventually was confirmed after telling senators that her views had broadened since. She said it was never permissible for a judge to “follow their personal convictions in the decision of a case, rather than what the law requires.”
A White House questionnaire last year cited Barrett as once writing abortion is “always immoral” and asked if that was still her view. She didn’t answer the question directly.
During her 2017 confirmation hearing, Barrett described each of her seven children, noting that two were adopted from Haiti.
Brett Kavanaugh
Kavanaugh, 53, is a Yaleeducated judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit who clerked for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy and is probably best known for his ties to President George W. Bush.
Kavanaugh also was key member of independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s team that produced the report that served as the basis for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
But he’s attracting the most attention for his view that presidents shouldn’t be bothered with legal inquiries. In a 2009 article in The Minnesota Law Review, Kavanaugh wrote that presidents are under such extraordinary pressure they “should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship while serving in office.”
Congress, he wrote, should pass a law that would temporarily protect the president from lawsuits and criminal prosecution. Clinton, for example, “could have focused on Osama bin Laden without being distracted by the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and its criminal investigation offshoots,” Kavanaugh wrote.
“If the President does something dastardly, the impeachment process is available,” Kavanaugh wrote.
But Kavanaugh’s ties to Washington (he was born in D.C.) and the GOP establishment could hurt his chances too, as Trump’s populist supporters clamor for an outsider and Democrats pan him as a political operative. (When he was confirmed to the federal appeals court in D.C. in 2006, Bush took the unusual step of hosting a Rose Garden swearing-in ceremony with 120 guests to celebrate.)
His judicial biography includes his times in two Boston Marathons, his coaching experience for his two daughters’ basketball teams and his regular participation in services at a Catholic church in Washington.
Raymond Kethledge
Kethledge, 51, is a former Kennedy law clerk and appeals court judge who graduated from the University of Michigan and its law school. He serves as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati.
He co-wrote a book with Army veteran Mike Erwin of The Positivity Project published last year called “Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude,” in which he describes himself as an introvert. In an interview with the legal news site Above the Law, Kethledge said “I love to write” and prefers working from his barn office in northern Michigan overlooking Lake Huron without an internet connection.
In the 1990s, Kethledge was counsel to Republican Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan, who became Bush’s energy secretary. Kethledge eventually founded a boutique litigation firm with two partners in Troy, Mich. He was nominated to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006 and confirmed in 2008.
Kethledge’s judicial opinions occasionally have made news. In 2013, he ruled against unions and upheld a Michigan law that bars school districts from collecting membership dues from teachers and other employees, leaving unions to collect the dues themselves.
In 2014, he ruled against the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a case it brought against a for-profit education company over its credit checks on potential employees, noting the EEOC performed the same checks. And in 2016 he wrote that police didn’t need a warrant to look at records that reveal where a cellphone user has been, a decision the Supreme Court overturned in a 5-4 ruling earlier this year.