I welcome the growing pattern of promoting District Court judges to the Circuit Court.
I was deeply gratified to learn that President Trump nominated Judge Lee Rudofsky of the Eastern District of Arkansas to a newly created vacancy on the Eighth Circuit. I have known Judge Rudofsky since his tenure as Arkansas’s Solicitor General nearly ten years ago. Judge Rudofsky is a steadfast originalist and a meticulous jurist. I share the Wall Street Journal’s forceful editorial backing Judge Rudofsky:
During the last seven years, Judge Rudofsky has built a reputation as a thoughtful jurist who is willing to reassess legal disputes from an originalist perspective. In 2022 he concluded that private parties cannot sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a provision intended to be enforced by the government (Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment). The left condemned his interpretation as sacrilege, but the ruling was upheld on appeal.
Earlier this summer, Judge Rudofsky dismissed the equal-protection claim in a suit challenging Arkansas’s ban on critical-race theory in public schools (Walls v. Sanders). “A desire to shield students from ‘left-wing indoctrination’ does not amount to discriminatory intent or purpose to harm African American students,” the judge wrote. “End of story.”
I also value President Trump’s pattern of elevating district court judges whom he appointed to the court of appeals. Perhaps the best predictor of how a circuit judge will perform is their past practice. Recently my friend Rob Luther highlighted a number of Trump’s district court picks from the last two years who should be near the top of any vacancy shortlist:
Let’s review some of Warrington’s best, young, District Court nominees/judges in: 1) Missouri (Divine, Benton, Bluestone, Lanahan); 2) Texas (Ganjei, Davis, Mitchell, Colmenero); 3) North Carolina (Orso, Rodriguez, Freeman, Bragdon); 4) Alabama (LaCour); 5) Kentucky (Meredith); 6) Montana (Smithgall Lane); 7) Kansas (Kuhlman); 8) Louisiana (St. John — already elevated to the Fifth Circuit) and 9) Tennessee (Lea — and today — Adkisson — one of Warrington’s most active and trusted deputies).
Notably, no Court of Appeals seats are expected to become available in most of these states in the near term. In other words, many of these newly minted District Judges could well serve as a blueprint for the next Republican President’s Court of Appeals nominees.
These nominations stand among David Warrington’s most significant contributions. And I fully anticipate White House Counsel Will Scharf (a colleague I’ve known since law school) to maintain the momentum in advancing nominations.
