Demand Justice, a far left group run by former Hillary Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon that has become the left’s voice on judicial nominations, came out with their “short list” of potential liberal Supreme Court nominees. The list is extreme to say the least. How extreme? As Carrie Severino points out:
Amazing: there must be hundreds of federal judges Obama put on the courts, and only 4 make this list. This list would have been way too liberal for Obama.
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) October 15, 2019
Severino also points out that it is unlike President Trump’s famous list in 2016, where all the candidates but one had judicial experience:
Only 8 of the 32 potential nominees on this list have judicial experience. Which makes sense - they're looking for activists, not judges.
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) October 15, 2019
Trump's list - with the sole exception of Sen. Mike Lee - was all judges, bc they were chosen for judicial philosophy, not political views.
A great example of the list’s extremism may be Goodwin Liu. Liu was defeated by a bipartisan filibuster by the U.S. Senate for a slot on the Ninth Circuit. In a number of essays at the time, Ed Whelan detailed the many problems with Liu, including:
Also noteworthy is his denunciation of the traditional American principles of “free enterprise,” “private ownership of property,” and “limited government” as “code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections”
Perhaps most striking, in part because Liu presents his position as so modest, is his law-review article “Rethinking Constitutional Welfare Rights,” which argues that judges (usually in an “interstitial” role) may legitimately invent constitutional rights to a broad range of social “welfare” goods, including education, shelter, subsistence, and health care.
The list is extreme. But keep in mind many Democrat candidates would not wait for a vacancy to place people like those on the list on the Supreme Court:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg have all suggested they are open to expanding the number of justices on the high court to counterbalance the conservative 5-4 majority on the court.
Not just lawyers but all who respect the rule of law should be troubled by the Democrats' and their liberal allies’ proposals on the Supreme Court.