The nomination of Emil Bove III to a federal appeals court suggests that President Trump has a new prototype and a new agenda when it comes to the law: Out with the eggheads and in with the street fighters. His first-term judicial appointments transformed constitutional law on a range of subjects, like abortion and affirmative action. In his first term, he served the conservative movement; this time, the movement must serve him.
The president has staffed the top leadership of the Justice Department with individuals whose chief qualification appears to be that they represented Mr. Trump as private lawyers. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, was one of Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers at his first impeachment trial. (Previously, she was the attorney general of Florida.) Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, represented Mr. Trump at his criminal trial in Manhattan. D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, was the lead counsel for Mr. Trump at the Supreme Court when he challenged his prosecution in Trump v. United States. Mr. Bove, who is now Mr. Blanche’s principal deputy in the Justice Department, was his partner in the defense of Mr. Trump in Manhattan. Just as Mr. Trump has put his onetime advocates at the pinnacle of American law enforcement, the nomination of Mr. Bove signals the president’s desire to embed his loyalists in the judicial branch.
With a devoted executive branch and a compliant Congress, Mr. Trump has faced real resistance only from the judiciary, and the nomination of Mr. Bove marks the beginning of his counterattack. His prominence at the Justice Department raises the question of why the president would sideline Mr. Bove to fill a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, an important lifetime position reviewing federal cases in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware but one well removed from carrying out the Trump agenda from day to day.
The answer, which seemed apparent if unspoken at Mr. Bove’s confirmation hearing last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, is that the president is grooming Mr. Bove for bigger things — possibly a seat on the Supreme Court.
Even the harshest critic of Mr. Trump’s three nominees to the Supreme Court in his first term would have to acknowledge that they possessed judicial temperaments. Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh had won broad respect as experienced federal appeals court judges who had written dozens of opinions; Amy Coney Barrett had only recently become a judge, but she had long been an accomplished and thoughtful law professor. Mr. Bove could scarcely differ more.
At the age of 44, Mr. Bove has never written anything of consequence or even, apparently, expressed any views on the central issues of constitutional law. That in itself is not unprecedented for a lower court nominee, but what does distinguish Mr. Bove is his record of hard-edge advocacy and loyalty to Mr. Trump.
