Washington (CNN)
As President-elect Donald Trump considers the current Supreme Court vacancy, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and other legal giants kicked off a conference bringing together judicial conservatives from all over the country.
What a difference a few weeks makes.
The subject of the conference, sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, was the jurisprudence of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. But the talk in the hallways was devoted to the unexpected election results and the pending Supreme Court nomination -- expected to be a conservative who would continue Scalia's legacy.
Indeed, several of the judges Trump is considering for the Supreme Court were milling about in the hallways, dodging journalists and moderating various panels.
"It's not the wake we thought it was going to be," said Randy Barnett, a professor of Georgetown law who was an architect of the first legal challenge against the Affordable Care Act.
John Malcolm of the conservative Heritage Foundation said that when he was planning to come to the conference a few weeks ago, he thought the lawyers might join together to "commiserate" Clinton's win.
Instead, he said, "we are here to celebrate."
Luther Strange III, the attorney general of Alabama spoke about the dozens of lawsuits he and other Republican state attorneys general filed against the Obama administration in areas such as immigration, transgender rights and the Clean Power Plan.
"We are no longer the last line of defense," Strange said. "We are now the spear." ...
Read more at:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/conservative-lawyers-cheer-trump-scalia-replacement/index.html
