[Ilya Somin] Can Trump be trusted on judicial appointments?

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Some conservatives and even a few libertarians continue to argue that judicial appointments may be a good reason to support Donald Trump, even as others remain skeptical. Back in May, Trump issued a fairly impressive list of possible Supreme Court nominees, which included a number of prominent originalist judges. The key question here is whether Trump can be trusted on this issue. The answer is no – for reasons that go beyond simple dishonesty.

The most obvious reason why Trump can’t be trusted is that he has a long history of lying and deception. As Conor Friedersdorf recounts, Trump’s first two wives, business partners, employees, and contractors all learned the painful lesson that Trump’s word means nothing whenever it becomes convenient for him to break it. Traditional Republicans who care about the Court and originalism have no reason to expect better treatment at his hands. It’s not as if they’re a group he particularly likes, to put it mildly.

Friedersdorf also notes that Trump has already broken an important previous promise he made to Hugh Hewitt, one of the biggest champions of the idea that we should now trust Trump on the Court. Last year, he promised Hewitt that he would release his tax returns if he ran for president. That pretty obviously is not happening. Trump’s promise to Hewitt about the Court should be viewed in the same light.

Trump himself has stated that the list is merely a “guide” and not binding. Even in his most recent comments to Hewitt, Trump avoided saying that he will actually stick to the list, but merely that he will appoint someone with “very similar principles” to those on the list. Trump’s view of what qualifies as “very similar” could easily be different from Hewitt’s or anyone else’s.

Even if Trump is generally untrustworthy, some argue that he might keep his promises about the Court simply because he knows little about constitutional issues, and cares less. Since he supposedly has nothing to gain by breaking his word, he might as well keep it.

Trump is indeed profoundly ignorant about the Constitution. This is a man who thinks judges sign bills (they don’t), and that the Constitution has an Article XII (it doesn’t). But ignorance is not the same thing as indifference. Trump is not just a blank slate on constitutional issues. He has an agenda of his own.

He has a long history of seeking to undermine freedom of speech and constitutional property rights. He also seeks to gut constitutional constraints on executive power on a wide range of issues, doubling down on some of the worst precedents of the Bush and Obama administrations. And he admires the repressive practices of authoritarian regimes, such as the strognman tactics of Vladimir Putin and the Chinese government’s Tiananmen Square massacre.

More generally, he seeks to transform the Rep