A key abortion rights-supporting Republican senator said Sunday that she would oppose some of the people on President Donald Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), holds the key to the confirmation of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s replacement, would not say which of the candidates on Trump’s publicly released list she would oppose. But she said on ABC’s “The Week with George Stephanopoulos” that she is looking for a justice who respects precedent.
“There are people on that list who I could not support because I believe they have demonstrated a disrespect for the vital principle of stare decisis, which, as Chief Justice [John] Roberts has said, is the fundamental principle of our judicial system that promotes even-handedness and stability,” she told guest host Martha Raddatz.
Collins, one of five senators to meet with Trump last week after Kennedy announced he would step down July 31, said the president indicated he has added additional candidates to the list he first released when he was running for the presidency and then expanded after becoming president.
Collins (pictured above) said she encouraged Trump to broaden his consideration.
“I think the president should not feel bound by that list and instead seek out recommendations so that he gets the best possible person,” she said.
Trump has said he would announce his decision by July 9, but Collins added she does not believe the president simply was going through the motions by meeting with her and her colleagues.
“I got the feeling that he was still deliberating, and that he had not yet made the decision and that this was genuine outreach on his part,” she said.
While Collins said some of the potential nominees would be unacceptable to her, fellow Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) suggested none of them are worthy of a seat on the court.
“The ones I have seen who have emerged to the top of the list, no, and a number of them I have voted on already,” she told Raddatz. “Because I have already seen that when you look back at their record, a number of them are writing concurrences where they go out of their way to try to make new law.”
Federalist Society co-founder Leonard Leo, who has advised Trump on judicial nominations, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the most important criterion for the president should be finding a judge who has a “record of showing fairness.” He said liberals have exaggerated the certainty over what a new Trump nominee would mean to the Roe. v. Wade precedent, which legalized abortion nationwide.
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“For 36 years, people have been talking about it being overturned … No president is particularly good at speculating about this thing — no one is,” he said. “So I don’t think at the end of the day it’s about Roe v. Wade. It’s about having judges on the court who are going to interpret the Constitution the way it’s written.”
Collins said she would probe the nominee about his or her views on the importance judges should give to prior decisions.
“I’m going to have an in-depth discussion with the nominee, and I believe very much that Roe v. Wade is settled law, as it has been described by Chief Justice Roberts,” she said.
PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage image: Sen. Susan Collins, CC BY 2.0, by Shirley Li, Medill DC)
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