Last week, Donald Trump said that he was drawing closer to announcing his pick to replace former Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Now, reports claim that Alabamian Bill Pryor could be close to receiving an appointment.
During an interview on Fox News, the president-elect said he narrowed the list “down to probably three or four” candidates.
“They are terrific people,” Trump said. “Highly respected, brilliant people.”
Reportedly, Alabama-native Bill Pryor has made the short list.
During his campaign, Trump released a list of over twenty potential SCOTUS nominees, assuring that he would not pick a justice outside of the list. Trump is working with the conservative Federalist Society to finalize his pick.
Pryor is an icon in conservative legal circles and has already enjoyed a distinguished legal career, including stints as Alabama’s deputy attorney general and attorney general (succeeding now-U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions) before being nominated to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush in 2003.
Senate Democrats initially filibustered Pryor’s nomination and criticized him for being an “extremist” after he referred to the Supreme Court as “nine octogenarian lawyers” and called Roe v. Wade the “worst abomination in the history of constitutional law” and “a constitutional right to murder an unborn child.”
President Bush went on to install Pryor as a federal judge through a recess appointment. He was eventually confirmed by a vote of 53-45.
As a federal judge, Pryor has upheld voter ID laws (Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups) and argued against ObamaCare’s contraceptive mandate.
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