Last month, President Trump was sworn into office, and there has been a great deal of speculation that Justices Thomas and Alito might retire from the Supreme Court in order to let him fill their seats. This speculation may be right or wrong — there’s obviously no way to know for sure — but it does raise an interesting question: If President Trump is able to nominate two more Supreme Court justices, who would he pick?

Even though the South is the most populated area of the United States (and the fastest-growing), only three out of the Supreme Court’s nine justices hail from our region. In North Carolina specifically, no one from our state has served on the court since Alfred Moore was appointed by John Adams in 1800.

Given the South’s importance in national politics and its rich supply of brilliant judges, it is possible that President Trump will seek to reverse this trend by appointing additional Southerners to the high court. This article takes a look at four Southern jurists who might be considered. Specifically, I focus on some of the legal ideas that have intrigued these deep thinkers, and which they might seek to pursue further if nominated to the Supreme Court.

Justice Trey Allen of North Carolina: Judicial restraint

This past summer, I had the pleasure of interning in Justice Allen’s chambers at the North Carolina Supreme Court, and I have followed his opinions and legal scholarship for several years. Justice Allen is an advocate of judicial restraint and deference to elected officials.

Before joining the court, his scholarship as a professor at UNC Chapel Hill focused on the “immunity doctrines that shield . . . state and local governments from lawsuits” — and thereby keep the power of courts in check.

During a 2022 debate in the state Supreme Court race, he was asked to name a court case that exemplified his judicial philosophy. He chose Bayard v. Singleton (1787), the famous NC court case which established the power of judicial review. Justice Allen pointed out that the Bayard panel had done everything it could to resolve the case without overriding a state law. It had first “tried to get the parties to settle,” and when that failed, the court reluctantly struck down the statute in question, but the majority narrowed its ruling as much as possible to leave room for the legislature to accomplish its goals.

“[Bayard] shows,” he said, “that our courts realized, even at the birth of judicial review, that it’s a really big deal to strike down an act of the legislature because it reflects the will of the people—and [that] our courts should only do that in exceptional circumstances when there’s no other option.”

Judge James Ho of Texas: Judicial courage

Throughout his career, Judge Ho has shown a passion for what he calls “judicial courage,” or the ability to stand by one’s principles even in the face of harsh criticism from the legal establishment. In a law review article published last year, he argued that many federal judges and successful lawyers become proud of having “fancy credentials” — including “fancy law schools, fancy clerkships, fancy law firms and government jobs” — and are tempted to “collect[ ] even more gold stars.”

The problem in his view is that “if you plan to be faithful to the Constitution in every case, no matter how unpopular that may be, gold stars are not in the cards,” and “[p]rincipled originalists aren’t exactly showered with praise” from the media and the legal academy. Instead of putting personal reputation before the law, judges must faithfully practice originalism even if it “sometimes lead[s] to results condemned by cultural elites.”

Living by this standard during his time on the bench, Judge Ho has frequently taken positions that were controversial in the legal academy when he believed that fidelity to the law demanded it.

Judge Andrew Oldham of Texas: Taking history seriously

During his time on the bench, Judge Oldham has taken a strong interest in legal history, and he often uses it to point out limitations on the federal judiciary’s power. In a recent paper, he argued that Ex Parte Young injunctions (a type of order that federal courts frequently use to strike down state laws) are inconsistent with the history of Article III and traditional equity practice.

In his view, courts likely do not have the power to issue these orders unless Congress authorizes it. This is a major challenge to how lawyers think about judicial review. And if adopted by the Supreme Court, it would greatly shift power from federal courtrooms back to elected state legislatures.

Judge Julius Richardson of South Carolina: Presidential discretion

The president’s ability to determine how and when laws will be enforced is essential to the separation of powers. In his first days of his second term, President Trump often used this power to effect legal change. For example, he declined to enforce a federal law banning TikTok and also rescinded a Biden administration memo that restricted the discretion of ICE agents.

During his time on the bench, Judge Richardson has emphasized the importance of this presidential discretion. Most famously, in 2019 he served on the panel that ruled on President Trump’s rescission of DACA. The court ruled that President Trump’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act. In a partial dissent, Judge Richardson pointed out that DACA was simply an exercise of the Obama administration’s unreviewable prosecutorial discretion, and that the Trump administration’s reversal of DACA was therefore unreviewable too.

“Encroachment by the judiciary,” he declared, “into enforcement decisions upsets [our] constitutional balance.”

Since the DACA case, Judge Richardson has continued to emphasize the importance of presidential enforcement discretion. And over the past month, he has spoken to several Federalist Society chapters on this power.

Excellent choices

There are many brilliant legal thinkers absent from this list who will probably be considered for a Supreme Court seat, including Judge Paul Matey of the Third Circuit, Judge Amul Thapar of the Sixth Circuit, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit, Judge Lawrence VanDyke of the Ninth Circuit, Judge Marvin Quattlebaum of the Fourth Circuit, Judge Chad Readler of the Sixth Circuit, Justice Phil Berger of the NC Supreme Court, and Judge Allison Jones Rushing of the Fourth Circuit, along with numerous others.

As the legal writer David Lat recently said, President Trump has an “embarrassment of riches” when it comes to high-quality potential nominees. Despite their many differences, any of these jurists would make an excellent Supreme Court justice.