Main Points of above article:
Today, the Federalist Society boasts more than 70,000 members.
For most of the organization’s first three decades, its dominant philosophical emphasis was on judicial restraint: the idea that judges shouldn’t overrule majority-passed, democratically enacted laws — that they shouldn’t, as Amanda Hollis-Brusky, a Pomona College professor and the author of the 2015 book “Ideas With Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution,” puts it, “move the law too far, too fast.” This philosophy emerged largely as a reaction to liberal rulings by the Warren and Burger courts — as well as those of lower-court judges — who, conservatives complained, tried to “legislate from the bench” on civil rights and civil liberties. But within the Federalist Society and the larger conservative legal movement, there was an emerging faction that favored a more aggressive approach. These libertarian legal theorists, led by the Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett, subscribed to the judicial philosophies of originalism and textualism, which hold that judges should interpret the Constitution according to the meaning of its plain text, instead of its intent or purpose, and, more important, should not hesitate to overturn any law that deviates from that text.
When Trump Took office, he inherited not just an open Supreme Court seat but 107 additional judicial vacancies. Ronald Reagan, by contrast, had 35 unfilled judgeships; Obama had 54.
As White House counsel, McGahn is responsible for helping Trump select his judicial nominees. And, as he explained in his speech that November afternoon, he had drawn up two lists of potential judicial appointments. The first list consisted of “mainstream folks, not a big paper trail, the kind of folks that will get through the Senate and will make us feel good that we put some pragmatic folks on the bench.” The second list was made up of “some folks that are kind of too hot for prime time, the kind that would be really hot in the Senate, probably people who have written a lot, we really get a sense of their views — the kind of people that make some people nervous.” The first list, McGahn said, Trump decided to “throw in the trash.” The second list Trump resolved “to put before the U.S. Senate” for a confirmation vote.
The blue slip tradition has been how California's senators (Feinstein, Harris and Barbara Boxer) have kept the 9th Court of Appeals (aka CA9) full of pretty liberal leaning judges, despite CA9 covering far more than California.one of the Senate’s many cherished procedural instruments known as a “blue slip.” The blue slip is literally a slip of paper that a senator returns to the Judiciary Committee signaling that a given nominee in his or her state should receive a hearing. First introduced in 1917, the blue slip has been accorded varying weights by different Judiciary Committee chairmen, but when Obama took office, the committee’s chairman was Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. Leahy, a strong institutionalist and protector of the Senate’s prerogatives, viewed the blue slip as something akin to a Holy Writ. If a home-state senator, a Republican or a Democrat, did not want a judicial nominee to have a hearing, Leahy would not schedule one — essentially putting a hold on the nomination. In doing so, Leahy told me, he was giving “real meaning to ‘advise and consent’ ” and ensuring that the Senate kept “its institutional independence and didn’t become a rubber stamp.”
Trump, just went nuclear.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump- ... th-circuit
President Trump is plowing ahead to fill three vacancies on the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, brushing aside Democratic resistance to nominate conservative judges.
Presidents traditionally work with senators from judicial nominees' home state -- in this case, California -- to put forward judicial picks. They often seek what's known as a "blue slip," or an opinion from those senators.
But in a snub to California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, the White House announced Wednesday that Trump had nominated Patrick Bumatay, Daniel Collins and Kenneth Kiyul Lee (all from the Golden State, and reportedly all members of the conservative Federalist Society) to the influential circuit. The court, with a sprawling purview representing nine Western states, has long been a thorn in the side of the Trump White House, with rulings against the travel ban and limits on funding to "sanctuary cities."
GOP critics have branded the court the “Nutty 9th,” in part because many of its rulings have been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Sacramento Bee reported that White House officials had been negotiating with Feinstein and Harris about the appointments earlier in the year, but the dialogue collapsed over the summer.
Any working relationship is likely only to have soured further after Harris and Feinstein led the charge on the Senate Judiciary Committee against the confirmation of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In particular, Trump and Republicans accused Feinstein of withholding information about an allegation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh until after the hearings were over. Both Feinstein and Harris voted against Kavanaugh's nomination, joined by all but one Democratic senator.
Feinstein and Harris reacted angrily to the news of the latest appointments. Feinstein said in a statement that she had been prepared to accept a reported White House proposal of three other judges. She said she opposed both Collins and Lee -- who she said had failed to disclose his “controversial writings” on voting rights and affirmative action.
“I repeatedly told the White House I wanted to reach an agreement on a package of 9th Circuit nominees, but last night the White House moved forward without consulting me, picking controversial candidates from its initial list and another individual with no judicial experience who had not previously been suggested,” she said in a statement.
“Instead of working with our office to identify consensus nominees for the 9th Circuit, the White House continues to try to pack the courts with partisan judges who will blindly support the president’s agenda, instead of acting as an independent check on this administration,” Harris spokeswoman Lily Adams told The Sacramento Bee.
