The Front-Runners and Full List of Potential Supreme Court Nominees

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced Wednesday that he would retire from the Supreme Court. His vacancy sets up a showdown for a replacement that could change the direction of the highest court in the United States.

President Donald Trump said he intends to choose his next Supreme Court nominee from a list he began compiling during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I think you see the kind of quality that we’re looking at when you look at that list,” Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office.

He added, “So it will be somebody from that list.”

Here is a look at some early front-runners for the job, and the full list of 25 potential nominees, as released by the White House in November.

Trump considered Hardiman last year for the seat that was ultimately filled by Justice Neil Gorsuch. Hardiman was first appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2003 and was elevated to the appeals court four years later. He has built a reputation as a reliable conservative on the court, where he has served alongside Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, who is said to have recommended Hardiman for the Supreme Court vacancy last year. One opinion that could resonate with Trump: Hardiman signed on to a decision declaring that asylum-seekers could not ask a U.S. District Court to prevent or postpone their deportation while challenging their removal orders.

Pryor was viewed as a finalist for last year’s vacant seat on the court. He has called Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman’s constitutional right to have an abortion, as “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.” He is close with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and, like Sessions, is an outspoken conservative who has strongly opposed gay rights.

Thapar was confirmed to the appeals court last year and previously served as a judge on the U.S. District Court in eastern Kentucky. The son of Indian-American immigrants, the White House said he was the first federal court judge of South Asian descent. Thapar was among those considered by Trump for last year’s Supreme Court vacancy. “I’m my own judge and I hope my track record speaks to that,” he told senators last year.

Even before Gorsuch was confirmed, White House officials were already signaling their interest in Kavanaugh for a future opening on the Supreme Court, should it occur. Trump did not include Kavanaugh on his original list of potential nominees, but added him to a revised list released last fall. A former prosecutor under the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Kavanaugh was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush in 2006 and had a difficult road to confirmation. As a White House adviser, he helped Bush fill the nation’s courts with conservatives. “Mr. Kavanaugh would probably win first prize as the hard right’s political lawyer,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at the time.

A former Michigan state Supreme Court justice, Larsen was confirmed last year to the federal bench. During her confirmation process, she was criticized by civil rights groups for her past rulings and writings on gay rights. Larsen clerked for former Justice Antonin Scalia and has praised his by-the-letter reading of the Constitution and the law. A former law professor at the University of Michigan, Larsen said at her confirmation hearing last year that she would be an independent-minded jurist. “If someone believes I’ve passed some litmus test, I honestly don’t know how they came to that conclusion,” she said.

Barrett became something of a hero to religious conservatives last year when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., questioned what influence the jurist’s Roman Catholic faith would have on her rulings from the bench. She was questioned in particular about a 1998 article in which she argued that Catholic judges should sometimes recuse themselves from sentencing in death penalty cases. At her confirmation hearing, she backed away from that position. A former law clerk to Scalia, she served for 15 years as a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.

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