After years of complaining about President Trump’s process for picking Supreme Court justices, a key liberal advocacy group has figured that if they can’t beat him, they might as well join him.
The Alliance for Justice says it’s creating a board of progressives to vet judicial nominees for a future Democratic president, looking to have a set of potential picks in place for a new White House occupant in 2021.
Dubbed the “Building the Bench” initiative, it’s similar to the president’s use of the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, which in 2016 helped candidate Donald Trump craft a list of potential Supreme Court picks — a list he’s used to inform the decisions he’s made since sitting in office.
Yet where Mr. Trump made his list public while campaigning and urged voters to see who he would pick, the Alliance for Justice has made no such commitment.
Mike Davis, president of The Article III Project, which backed Mr. Trump’s nominees, said that’s a major problem.
“Their approach could not be more different than President Trump’s approach,” he said.
Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice, says there are other, bigger differences. She says her board will rely on a number of other organizations, making it collaborative.
“Our model is very different from the Federalist Society, which provided a limited ’list’ to the Trump administration; rather, we aim to act as a resource for senators and the White House as they make the final decisions,” she said.
She said one goal will be to elevate a more diverse group of potential nominees, noting that 75% of Mr. Trump’s judicial nominees have been male and nearly 90% are white.
“The goal will be a bench that is more professionally and demographically diverse and includes judges who are committed to upholding all our rights and freedoms,” Ms. Aron told The Washington Times.
While presidential candidates frequently get asked about what kinds of court picks they would make, Mr. Trump in May 2016 took the bold step of not only identifying a type, but also releasing a list of 11 names from which he said he fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia. He added 10 more names that September.
The moves were popular with conservatives, many of whom were wary of Mr. Trump but liked what they saw in the lists.
The lists were written with the assistance of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers and scholars.
The society has become a favorite bogeyman for Democrats, who accuse it of dark motives and secret tactics. The group is also wildly successful, with top official Leonard Leo even taking a leave of absence to assist the White House in judicial selections in 2017.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, has been known to quiz court nominees on their relationships with Mr. Leo or about Federalist Society events they’ve attended. But he brushed aside questions about the propriety of AFJ’s new vetting board.
“Get back to me when Democrats boast about ’insourcing’ their entire nominations process to one individual propped up by $250 million in anonymous money,” he told The Times.
The vetting board’s 31 members include some prominent legal scholars with colorful careers.
One is Harvard University law professor Mark Tushnet, who has called for the Supreme Court to be abolished.
He didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Times.
Another is Melissa Murray, a professor at New York University School of Law, who defended “Drag Queen Story Hour,” a program where drag queens read to children and sing at libraries.
“Reasonable people can disagree about how the bench should be constituted, but compiling a pool of prospective candidates is a no-brainer, no matter what side you’re on,” she told The Times in an email.
No Democratic presidential hopeful has committed to using the AFJ’s vetting process yet.
The Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group, is running ads demanding candidates release lists of names of potential judicial nominees, saying voters deserve to know.
Sen. Chris Coons, Delaware Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, said he doubts the next Democratic president would outsource the judicial selection process to AFJ.
He did say, though, it’s wise for the next administration to be prepared to fill vacancies quicker than President Obama’s administration, which took some time before it got moving on judicial appointments.
“In my view, that is the role of the president and of White House counsel and of the executive branch to consider, vet and not to simply just take lists,” he said.
Fellow Judiciary Committee member Sen. John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, said he doesn’t mind hearing from a variety of organizations.
“This is America and everybody is entitled to their opinion and I’m happy to listen to as many as I can,” he told The Times.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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