3 Michigan judges on Trump's Supreme Court replacement list

Todd Spangler | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump 'immediately' starts hunt for new Supreme Court justice President Donald Trump says he'll "immediately" begin a search for new Supreme Court justice after Anthony Kennedy announces his retirement Wednesday. Trump describes Kennedy as a man of "tremendous vision." (June 27)

WASHINGTON — With U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announcing his retirement, President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will nominate a replacement from a list he had earlier compiled of 25 potential justices.

Three of them are from Michigan.

In the spring of 2016, before his election, Trump issued a list of 11 conservative judges he considered “representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value” and said he would use it as “a guide to nominate our next United State Supreme Court justices.”

That list included two judges with Michigan connections: Judge Raymond Kethledge, on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, and then-Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen, who last year was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to join Kethledge on the Sixth Circuit.

After that, he added more names, including that of former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Bob Young, who considered a run for the U.S. Senate this year and has since been brought in by Michigan State University to help it respond to multiple investigations connected to the Larry Nassar scandal.

The nomination battle to replace Kennedy could be a fiercely political one, however, coming in the middle of the midterm elections and after a Republican-led Senate refused to confirm then-President Barack Obama's pick, Judge Merrick Garland, in 2016.

Kethledge was appointed to the Sixth Circuit by President George W. Bush and confirmed in 2008. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, he also served as a law clerk to Kennedy on the Supreme Court and served as counsel to former U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich.

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Larsen is a former law professor and special counsel to the dean at the University of Michigan who also clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She was a deputy assistant U.S. attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush from 2002-2003 and named to the Michigan Supreme Court in 2015 by Gov. Rick Snyder.

In 2017, Trump nominated and won confirmation of former Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch, a conservative jurist who replaced Scalia and played a key role in several important decisions this term, including those upholding Trump’s travel ban on immigrants from several countries, most of which are majority Muslim, on national security grounds, and finding that public employees cannot be forced to pay agency dues to unions they do not belong to but bargain collectively on their behalf.

Contact Todd Spangler at 703-854-8947 or at tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler

