(RNN) - President Donald Trump promised on Twitter an "exceptional person" would be chosen as his pick for Supreme Court justice.
The announcement is coming Monday at 9 p.m. ET from the White House, he said. It's expected to be another televised presentation like the one where the former reality show star introduced Justice Neil Gorsuch in February 2017.
Trump told reporters he's narrowed his list to around four candidates, building the suspense by saying he hadn't come to a final decision by Sunday. Trump spent the weekend at his New Jersey golf resort as officials, political groups and other advocates for the candidates speculated and lobbied for their favorite candidate.
Multiple reports identified the finalists as appellate court judges Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Raymond Kethledge and Thomas Hardiman, although at least three other names have been mentioned as interviewees for the job. Many of them would be the only justice who did not attend an Ivy League school on the court, if confirmed.
The confirmation process for any candidate should be contentious, with a conservative pick solidifying a 5-4 majority on the high court and a razor-thin 51-49 Republican majority in the Senate.
Trump said in the wake of Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement that he would not be asking potential justices about Roe v. Wade. However, candidate Trump in 2016 called overturning the ruling that legalized abortion a "litmus test," stating that it will happen if he got to choose two or three new members of the court.
Kennedy, 81, announced he would retire after 30 years on the Supreme Court. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, he has been known as the swing vote for years between four other Republican appointees and four appointed by Democrat presidents.
"Please permit me by this letter to express my profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises," Kennedy wrote in a letter to Trump.
Kennedy sided with conservative justices the majority of the time over the years, including well-known cases like Citizens United, allowing corporations to spend unlimited money on political campaigns, and Bush v. Gore, effectively awarding the presidency to George W. Bush.
He aligned with the liberal justices on Obergefell v. Hodges, which allowed same-sex couples to marry, and on abortion rights and affirmative action cases.
Top candidates:
Amy Coney Barrett
Barrett, 46, has been a federal appeals judge for the Seventh Circuit since October, nominated to the position by Trump and confirmed by a 55-43 vote. She had been a law professor at Notre Dame, her alma mater, and served as a clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia.
She has become a favorite of conservatives and evangelical groups for her comments on how her Catholic faith influences her decisions, spotlighted during her confirmation hearing in an exchange with Democrat Sen. Diane Feinstein.
Critics of Barrett describe an activist judge who would overturn the Roe v. Wade landmark abortion case. A Washington Post editorial identified her as the candidate who posed the biggest danger to abortion rights, pointing to Barrett's writings on abortion and ignoring legal precedents set by the high court.
Brett Kavanaugh
Kavanaugh, 53, is a former clerk of the retiring Kennedy and has served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for the last 10 years. A George W. Bush appointee to his current position, Kavanaugh had worked as counsel and staff secretary in the White House before his nomination.
A graduate of Yale and Yale Law, he also was a member of Kenneth Starr's independent council team that investigated President Bill Clinton. Democrats are expected to draw from the Starr report Kavanaugh helped write to criticize Trump - the report argued a president could be impeached for lying to staff or misleading the public.
Conservatives have taken issue with a potential Kavanaugh nomination, with some critics on the right citing his closeness to the Bush 43 administration while others believe he doesn't have a strong enough stance against abortion. Republican Sen. Rand Paul reportedly took issue with Kavanaugh's rulings on health care, which could be a concern due to Republicans' small margin for error in the Senate.
Raymond Kethledge
Kethledge, 51, has sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since July 2008, a Bush 43 appointee. He, like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, clerked for Kennedy.
He is considered a Constitutional originalist and textualist, similar in style and manner to Trump's first Supreme Court appointee.
A respected writer, he has issued opinions on matters such as racial discrimination (ruling against a discrimination charge in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in EEOC v. Kaplan Higher Education Corp.), health care (ruling against an industry-friendly settlement in Shane Group, Inc. v Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan), and labor (ruling against teachers' unions in Bailey v. Callaghan).
He got his bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Michigan.
Thomas Hardiman
Hardiman, 52, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, was supposedly beaten out by Gorsuch the last time Trump was able to select a justice.
He attended the University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University Law Center. During his summers away from law school he drove a taxi to pay for tuition.
He practiced law in Pittsburgh and was active in Republican politics before becoming a federal district judge at the age of 37. In 2007, at age 41, he was confirmed to the Third Circuit.
Hardiman’s rulings on cases have supported a broad reach of the Second Amendment. He has yet to rule on abortion.
Joan Larsen
Larsen, 49, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, has a conservative background but one of the shortest judicial records of all possible nominees.
Trump appointed her the Sixth Circuit after serving on the Michigan Supreme Court from 2015 to 2017.
She attended law school at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law - graduated first in her class - and clerked for Scalia. Larsen taught at both the University of Michigan School of Law and the Pritzker School of Law.
Larsen worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush and has supported strengthening presidential powers. When Bush limited the McCain Amendment that outlawed the use of torture on those in U.S. custody, she argued that he should be able to protect the nation without interference from Congress.
She is a member of the Federalist Society, and was on Trump’s possible nominees list when Gorsuch got the nod.
Amul Thapar
He also was among the candidates interviewed by Trump before the president selected Gorsuch to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.
Thapar, born to Indian immigrant parents in Michigan, has sat on the Sixth Circuit since last May after being appointed by Trump.
He clerked for federal judges and worked in private practice, the corporate world and academia before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office in 2002 and serving as a U.S. Attorney from 2006 to 2007.
He became the first federal judge of South Asian descent when Bush 43 appointed him to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in 2007.
The 49-year-old got his law degree from U.C. Berkeley and is considered a Constitutional originalist and "dream choice" for conservatives.
He once had a ruling related to criminal sentencing overturned by another judge considered a potential Trump choice, Raymond Kethledge, at the Appeals Court level in United States v. Walli.
Sen. Mike Lee
Lee, 47, is the lone lawmaker on Trump's purported shortlist for the vacant seat. The senator from Utah has been in office since 2011. A graduate of Brigham Young's law school, he clerked for future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and is the son of Rex Lee, the former Reagan solicitor general, but has never been a judge.
A hard-right lawmaker who rode the tea party wave to the Capitol, Lee has stepped out of line with Republicans on issues of civil liberties, including voting against Patriot Act provisions in 2011.
No senator has moved to the Supreme Court since Sherman Minton in 1949, and there was a gap of several years between jobs for him. Lee, a member of the judiciary committee, would be presented the unusual circumstance of needing his own vote to move on hearing if no Democrats favored him, something he indicated he would do.
Copyright 2018 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
