Libertarian presidential nominee Jo Jorgensen released an eclectic list of potential Supreme Court picks should she manage to win the White House, saying she would consider a number of high-profile law professors, some conservative judges and a former head of the ACLU.
Among those making her list were former New Jersey Supreme Court Judge Andrew Napolitano, known from his appearances on Fox News and a column that runs in The Washington Times; Georgetown University Law Center Professor Randy Barnett, an architect of the legal challenge to Obamacare; and George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley, whose defense of constitutional norms has made him a frequent witness on Capitol Hill.
Ms. Jorgensen also named Harvard University Professor Alan Dershowitz, who assisted in President Trump’s successful impeachment defense.
“We need justices who, unlike the majority of those appointed to our highest court over the past hundred years, will strictly uphold our Constitution,” said Ms. Jorgensen. “We must restore the limits that America’s founders imposed on federal authority, and rigorously defend both individual liberty and property rights.”
To that end, several of her names were lawyers involved in the 2005 Supreme Court decision Kelo v. New London, which ruled governments could use the power of eminent domain to take property from homeowners for economic public benefit. Ms. Jorgensen called the decision “notorious.”
She also listed two lawyers involved in the Heller decision, a major Second Amendment ruling that established the right to bear arms belongs to individuals.
One of her more intriguing names was Judge Don Willett, whom Mr. Trump appointed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and who has been on Mr. Trump’s own Supreme Court lists dating back to 2016, when he was still a judge on the Texas Supreme Court.
Ms. Jorgensen, a psychologist and lecturer at Clemson University, also named Nadine Strossen, who headed the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008 and is now a professor at New York Law School.
The list comes as a vacancy has arisen on the court.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died of pancreatic cancer last week and the battle to fill that seat is underway.
Ms. Jorgensen, in her statement, didn’t take a position on Republicans’ vow to fill the seat this year. But she said her list is there in case Democrats succeed in blocking the GOP.
She also praised Justice Ginsburg as “a dauntless supporter of civil liberties.”
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