May 18, 2016 3:17PM # Donald Trump’s Terrific List of Fabulous Judges By [Ilya Shapiro](https://www.cato.org/people/ilya-shapiro) --- SHARE We’ve been waiting for months for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to release his list of potential Supreme Court appointees. Today he actually [came through](http://elections.ap.org/content/trump-unveils-list-11-potential-supreme-court-justices) on that promise. The would-be justices, in the (alphabetical) order in which they appear in the AP story that broke the news, are: - Judge Steve Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (Iowa) - Justice Allison Eid of the Colorado Supreme Court - Judge Raymond Gruender of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (Missouri) - Judge Thomas Hardiman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Pennsylvania) - Judge Raymond Kethledge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (Michigan) - Justice Joan Larsen of the Michigan Supreme Court - Justice Thomas Lee of the Utah Supreme Court - Judge William Pryor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (Alabama) - Justice David Stras of the Minnesota Supreme Court - Judge Diane Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (Wisconsin) - Justice Don Willett of the Texas Supreme Court This is an exceptional list. I’m not intimately familiar with all 11 judges and I don’t expect to agree with all of them on everything, but those whose jurisprudence I know well are excellent and the others have sterling reputations. These are not squishes or lightweights. Also notable and commendable is that 5 of the 11 are state supreme court justices; not all judicial talent is already on the federal bench and the U.S. Supreme Court could use that sort of different perspective. I’ll forego quibbling over this or that pick — whom to drop for a top 10 or 5, whom to add to round out to 15, whether Senator Mike Lee would be better than his brother — but want to emphasize that these are among the very best judges who are young and smart enough to be on the Court. I’m no fan of the Donald — and who knows whether he’d follow through if elected? — but he’s listening to the right advisers here. As I’ve [previously written](http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/20/there-are-better-reasons-to-vote-against-trump-than-judge-picks/), Trump may not know originalism from origami, but there are better reasons to vote against him than judges. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).