Tag: Joan Larsen

Second in a series of posts about the politics of filling the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

In an earlier post, I attempted to flesh out the political landscape surrounding any potential Supreme Court nomination. With President Trump announcing his plan to name a nominee at the end of this week, I now turn to whom he should nominate from a strategic standpoint.

I note at the outset that this is a question of politics, not whether the nominee is necessarily the best fit for the Court. While all the likely nominees are well-qualified on paper, the President’s calculus is not (nor has it ever been) about the Court’s best interests. It is about making political hay. And that is the lens through which I approach the question.

I also leave aside the question of whether the President should decline to send a nomination until after the election. That is, of course, the overarching partisan game, which I explored previously. I assume here that the President will make a nomination within the timeline he has provided, that Senator Mitch McConnell will do everything he can to bring that nomination to a vote before November, and that Senate Democrats will do everything in their power to avoid that vote.

With that in mind, the most conventionally strategic nominee is Sixth Circuit judge Joan Larsen. As I have detailed elsewhere, Judge Larsen is a highly intelligent, thoughtful, and well-qualified judge from Michigan, a political swing state which will play a big role in the upcoming Presidential election. Beyond her qualifications, her nomination poses practical problems for Democrats, who do not want to be seen as opposing a female nominee — especially one who sailed through the Senate just three years ago when she was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Larsen is also popular among voters in her home state, where she was resoundingly reelected to the state supreme court in 2016.

By nominating Judge Larsen, the President would score a political victory no matter what happens during the confirmation process. If the Senate confirms her, Trump can claim victory, charge up his base, and score valuable political points among swing voters in Michigan. If Senate Democrats manage to forestall a vote, Trump can turn that delay into a high-profile campaign issue, deflecting attention from the Biden campaign’s efforts to focus the election on COVID and Trump’s personal behavior.

Judge Larsen is reportedly on the five-person short list under consideration by the President, so her nomination is very possible. And while the qualities of the nominee are secondary to scoring political points — at least to this President — her confirmation would be a positive for the country and the Court. There is little doubt in my mind that she would make an excellent, thoughtful, respected Supreme Court Justice.*

So who will be the Supreme Court nominee? I offer some thoughts in the next post.

* CNN apparently agrees. In a photo caption yesterday, they already referred to Judge Larsen as Justice Larsen.