President Trump promised to be a law-and-order President.  Nowhere are a President's actions felt longer in this area than in the judges he appoints to the federal bench, especially on the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Trump's appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court was a home run.  That is not to say that he always rules in our favor or that I agree with everything he says.  That is to say that he has both the ability to see the issues clearly and the principle to decide according to the Constitution that the people ratified, not one made up later by judges.  That is typically all the law-and-order side needs to prevail on constitutional questions that reach the Supreme Court.

Yet these issues do not divide cleanly on "liberal v. conservative" lines.  The one-dimensional left-right model of politics is deficient here.  Under the maxim of "all models are wrong but some are useful," we must be aware of the limitations of our models.  Within the so-called "right," there is a libertarian element that is okay with judicial activism as long as it favors their preferred results.  Some folks even think Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) was correctly decided and want to bring it back.  They adore Mapp v. Ohio (1961), despite its complete lack of any foundation in the text or history of the Constitution.

The Law-and-Order President needs to steer clear of this group in his choice of a Supreme Court nominee if he wants to hit a second home run and leave a law-and-order legacy.