Trump makes a statement with picks for the bench

While the confirmation process for lower court judges has typically been less rigorous than for Supreme Court nominees - Gorsuch, who Republicans had to change the rules to get on the Supreme Court, was unanimously approved for his spot on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals - Democrats could raise more of a fight with Trump in the White House.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said eight other nominees will be named later on Monday. Per that source, Trump will draw from lists of potential Supreme Court nominees he issued during the campaign, as well as other sources, for his candidates.

"The fate of numerous issues most dear to these millions of Americans are in the hands of the courts, more than Congress, the White House, or statehouses", Blackwell added.

President Trump announced his selection of 10 federal court nominees Monday, releasing a list that included two conservative judges who he once considered for the Supreme Court.

Stras was sworn in to the Minnesota Supreme Court by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar of the Eastern District of Kentucky is waiting for Senate confirmation for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

She was a law clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative giant on the court, and spoke at a memorial following his death in February.

Joan Larsen's nomination to a federal appeals court is being praised by her colleagues at the Michigan Supreme Court.

Trump will nominate judges John K. Bush of Kentucky and Joan Larsen of MI for the bench of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In addition, Justice Kennedy was the deciding vote in the Altria case, in which he and the Court's moderates barely rejected a claim by tobacco companies that they could not be sued for damages under state law for deceptive tobacco ads because of federal tobacco ad regulation.

The president will also nominate two people for federal judgeships: Dabney L. Friedrich of Washington, D.C., and Terry F. Moorer of Alabama. The John Roberts nugget is especially noteworthy because Roberts went from the private practice to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to the US Supreme Court as Chief Justice over the span of a few short years. He named Justice Joan Larsen, who, if confirmed, will be a circuit court judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The Trump administration has since confirmed the nomination.

Even though Trump's nominees have the academic qualifications. and some of them have some experience as judges; as we saw with Gorsuch, the resume doesn't reveal judicial philosophies or testify to the quality of a nominee's rulings when applicable.

As with the nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the White House solicited input from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, two institutions who loom large in the conservative legal firmament. It took President Obama until July of 2009 to name as many nominees.

"Gun owners certainly welcome the courts becoming more "gun friendly" under a Trump presidency", Pratt said.

Nonetheless, if Democrats turn this consultation into obstruction, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley may be forced to curtail the 100 year old blue slip tradition.

The 120 federal vacancies Trump still has to fill are more than twice the vacancies that greeted Obama during his tenure - seats he stacked with left-leaning judges, tipping the balance from a largely conservative federal judiciary to a liberal one. Nye had been nominated by President Obama but didn't receive a vote in the full Senate.

Before Trump was elected, Stras was on Trump's list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees.