President Trump To Nominate Jennifer Mascott To Third Circuit

I am very pleased that President Trump has announced that he will nominate Professor Jennifer Mascott to the Third Circuit.

I am pleased to nominate Jennifer Mascott to serve as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Jennifer clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, where she learned much about upholding the Constitution, and safeguarding our…

— Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) July 16, 2025

I have known Jenn for more than a decade, and have always found her to be a thoughtful scholar, a sharp lawyer, and a kind person. Perhaps most importantly, Jenn has proven herself to be the rare academic with strong scholarly bona fides and practical experience in public affairs. Jenn served in the Office of Legal Counsel during Trump's first term, and now serves in the White House Counsel's Office. That background will serve her well on the federal bench.

Congratulations to Jenn!

Comments

[Purple Martin]

Apparently, Harriet Myers wasn't available...

[AmosArch]

Trump's appointees at least for the SC actually have been relatively okay to Dem causes. About as good as you could hope for from a Republican President. You should thank him. I would probably thank a Dem President if he appointed justices that were as good to the right rather than the at all costs ideologues they are so skillful at selecting.

[Lee Moore]

I think Purple Martin is suggesting that she is patently unqualified, rather than that she is unquestioningly loyal to the Dark Side. (Though she may be that too - I'm fairly confident that Trump thinks she'll be on his side.)

Whether or not she is indeed patently unqualified, I have little doubt that Senator Kennedy will be able to find out pretty quickly.

But as you say, if any Dem SCOTUS appointees turned out to be even half as untethered to lefty positions, as Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts, Kennedy, and O'Connor - never mind Stevens and Souter - have been to righty positions; there would be dancing in the righty aisles. (And wailing in the lefty aisles.) But this would be proof that we had been transported into an alternative universe.

[Joe_dallas]

One of the many judicial confirmation hearings - with some of the most qualified of biden's nominees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgYdq8ebcZQ

[LawTalkingGuy]

You know I could do this with Trump appointees from the first term too, right?

[mulched]

Whatabout...

[LawTalkingGuy]

That’s literally what joe_Dallas was doing when he brought this up

[Joe_dallas]

complaining about the quality of trump appointees without noting the poor quality of biden appointees is just exposing your double standards and hypocrisy .

Hypocrisy and double standards of the left is something leftists are proud of.

[Sarcastr0]

Joe literally doesn't understand the problem with whattaboutism.

[Joe_dallas]

Another piss poor defense of your and the other leftists hypocrisy and double standards.

Get out of your echo chamber.

[Sarcastr0]

Joe's rejoinder is that whattaboutism is legitimately pointing out hypocricy when HE does it, but terrible double standards and deflection when anyone else does it.

He's really not doing great these days, eh?

[mulched]

meta-whatabout

[Joe_dallas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd-eYl-LiPs

[Riva]

Perhaps President Trump should look for more stellar legal intellects like Jackson?

[JasonT20]

We need fewer lawyers becoming judges that worked in partisan government positions, not more.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Unironically we need more judges who do insurance defense or commercial litigation.

[mulched]

I'd vote for that. The guys I know who did insurance defense had to be both smart and pragmatic.

[David Nieporent]

No objections, but it's not like insurance companies need more help. I'd like some public defenders, the sort of people who don't gasp with astonishment at the suggestion that a prosecutor or cop might lie.

[LawTalkingGuy]

It’s less about being biased in favor of a particular industry or entity and more about people who have a much more practical and realistic attitude towards litigation generally.

[Kazinski]

Maybe someone like Kash Patel when he's do e at the FBI, he is a former public defender.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

Patel's main qualification to run the FBI is that as a private citizen and podcaster, he correctly pointed out that FBI was corrupt because it would not release the Epstein files. As FBI director, his number one issue portfolio has been to release the Epstein files. It's unclear why he hasn't accomplished this yet, but sure it's no lack of competence. One reason I'd like to see him appointed to be a federal judge is that as a federal judge he could order the government to release the Epstein files, so we can finally send Crooked Hillary Clinton to Guantanamo for adrenochrome crimes.

[not guilty]

Adrenochrome crimes?? Really? https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/07/15/the-adrenochrome-conspiracy-theory-pushed-by-sound-of-freedom-star-explained/

What such "crimes" do you posit that "Crooked Hillary Clinton" has committed since July of 2020? See, 18 U.S.C. § 3282(a).

OTOH, if this is an illustration of Poe's Law, well played!

[not guilty]

Still waiting, Please, Daivd, Seek Help. What adrenochrome "crimes" do you posit that "Crooked Hillary Clinton" has committed since July of 2020?

[Lee Moore]

“thoughtful scholar, sharp lawyer, kind person”

Being a kind person is the entry drug to compassion, empathy and flinching from uncomfortable answers. Much easier to be a good unflinching judge if you’re naturally unsympathetic.

[BrotherMovesOn]

“empathy is the fundamental weakness of Western civilisation”

[hobie]

Yep, the MAGA should have learned by now that empathetic women judges may not always go Heritage-Foundation-Style hardcore.

[Lee Moore]

As Musk said in his fuller remarks, empathy is not a bad thing per se, it is merely dangerous or at least risky in some contexts.

There are plenty of places in life where empathy is valuable, even in contexts requiring a degree of ruthlessness - eg you are better placed to contend with an adversary if you are good as guessing what his motives are, and what he's going to do next; and trying to put yourself in his shoes is one way of attempting this. Though it's also easy to fool yourself - see Chamberlain and Mr H; Dubya and Putin etc.

It's just that judging is one place where it's actively unhelpful. Dispassion is the ideal, and empathy is a severe temptation to allow your feelings, vicariously acquired, to discard dispassion.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Jesus what a miserable way to think and live.

[Sarcastr0]

People don't want judge-bots. In fact, the notion is dystopian enough it's turned up as a common sci-fi trope.

But a small subset have convinced themselves they are a higher level of rationality and have special insight into the virtue of being an asshole.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Even setting aside the ideal judge, thinking about empathy in terms of how it will help you defeat your adversaries is just grim.

[Sarcastr0]

It's just objectivism but without the belabored rationalization scaffolding that Rand set up.

Pretty common among engineers in my college.

[LawTalkingGuy]

It’s also such an emotional response to being criticized for bad behavior. Like all this “toxic empathy” shit is just very emotional losers getting mad that sometimes they will see and hear things in the world that will make them feel bad.

Some of the most emotionally fragile people are in the “facts and logic” crowd.

[Lee Moore]

I knew you couldn’t resist telling me what I think for more than 24 hours 🙂

As I mentioned regarding Chamberlain and Dubya, some folk just aren’t very good at empathy. Their efforts at guessing what is going on in other folks heads are merely self delusion.

[Sarcastr0]

You post what you think, and enthusiastically.

You've been going on about how empathy has got to be kept on a tight leash. You compared it to being lazy!
That's some virtue of selfishness shit, whether you know it or not.

Your takes on Chamberlain and Bush as being empathy issues are...historically reductive to say the least.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

There was that big to-do when President Obama cited "empathy" as a helpful tool in the judicial toolkit. A bunch of people went on and on about how horrible that was. Now, kindness is a problem.

[LawTalkingGuy]

The thing is, no one would want a judge without empathy to judge them. Like if any of these “empathy is weakness” people ever got so much as a traffic ticket, they’d be hoping the judge cared enough about the minutiae of their lives and their appearance of remorse to cut them a break.

[Lee Moore]

Well obviously anyone charged with a crime would like the judge to be soft hearted enough to put his thumb on the scale for the accused.

Likewise any federal contractor would like the bureaucrat signing off on the contract to be dozy, poorly informed and eager to get to the golf course.

But such a bureaucrat is doing a poor job for the taxpayer in the same way that a judge moved by emotion to bend the law in favor of the object of his sympathy is doing a poor job for the public.

If you can’t abstract your emotions from your legal judgements you should be in another line of work.

[Brett Bellmore]

"People don't want judge-bots. In fact, the notion is dystopian enough it's turned up as a common sci-fi trope."

I want judge-bots. Better than the rule of men, at least you could predict the outcomes of cases.

[hobie]

For those without mercy let your judgment be merciless; James 2:13

[Lee Moore]

Our system reserves the exercise of mercy - ie a lesser punishment than the crime properly attracts under the law - to the President, or to the Governor.

[Sarcastr0]

The law is not an algorithm.
Judges deal with people, and you're treating them like engineers.

[Brett Bellmore]

The law SHOULD be an algorithm. You're just doubling down on preferring the rule of men to the rule of law.

[Lee Moore]

Ideally the law should be an algorithm, but in practice it cannot be. Hence unfortunately some amount of discretion has to be allowed to the arbiters.

The question is whether you see that discretion as an unavoidable bug, to be cornered and constrained whenever possible. Or as a desirable feature allowed to roam as freely as possible to permit our Guardian Judges to wisely deliver justice, fairness, mercy and “solutions” as they see fit.

This is the difference between a rule of men guy like Sarcastro, and a rule of law guy, like thee and me.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"Our system reserves the exercise of mercy [...] to the President, or to the Governor.

That is false. Players in the justice system from top to bottom have discretion and " the exercise of mercy" is not proscribed.

[bernard11]

It is possible to consider empathy as fact-finding.

It is not sympathy, as you seem to understand, but rather an effort to see things as others see them, in order to have a clearer understanding of motives and actions.

Doesn't the law take that sort of thing into account? When deciding whether X did something a "reasonable person" would do the reasonable person shouldn't be an Ivy-trained judge, but rather a reasonable version of X?

[Lee Moore]

I cannot say for IANAL, but I had not suspected that the concept of a “reasonable man” usually started with the defendant and then imagined him reasonable. I thought the idea was a more generalised reasonable man untethered to the defendant.

Obviously as AP Herbert pointed out, the concept of a “reasonable woman” is unknown to the law.

[bernard11]

but I had not suspected that the concept of a “reasonable man” usually started with the defendant and then imagined him reasonable.

I agree that would be dumb. But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that, in judging whether someone's behavior, or beliefs, are unreasonable it is important to understand the situation from their point of view, not one's own.

[Lee Moore]

Again, do not take advice from me on the law. But I don’t believe that the reasonable man thing has anything to do with trying to look at the situation from the defendant’s point of view. It’s about a hypothetical cardboard cutout reasonable man’s point of view.

I think seeing things through the defendant’s eyes is more to do with stuff like inferring motive, intention and so on. Which is typically the jury’s job rather than the judge’s.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“I am a shitty person who wants to make justifying my shittiness a matter of civilizational importance.”

[Frank Drackman]

Recognizing you’re an asshole is the first step

[Stella Link's Ghost]

Once you recognize that you are an asshole, the hard work begins. You must decide whether you want to continue to be an asshiole, if that is what you aspire to be.

[y81]

How long till Josh call for her resignation?

[Frank Drackman]

Brains AND Beauty, what a combination(People always overlook my Brains for my looks, what can you do?),
but not sure if she'll get Senator Feinstein's vote, it looks like the Dogma lives loudly in her.

Frank

[LawTalkingGuy]

I couldn’t find what she was doing between clerking and academic positions. Hopefully something resembling being a lawyer.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"Professor Mascott previously served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General in the U.S. Justice Department and as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General within the department’s Office of Legal Counsel."

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116992/witnesses/HHRG-118-JU05-Bio-MascottJ-20240320.pdf

[LawTalkingGuy]

No I mean between 2009 when she finished clerking and when she became faculty in 2011 which was only adjunct positions so I’m not sure if it was full time.

https://www.law.edu/_media/faculty/Mascott_AcademicCV-June2024.pdf

SAHP maybe? Vibing? Both of which are better and more useful than experience at right wing advocacy orgs or political appointments.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Ok. I second-guessed myself after typing that anyhow. Never mind.

[Bob from Ohio]

"right wing advocacy orgs "

Why the adjective? Left wing advocacy orgs would be equally useless, no?

[Lee Moore]

Not from LawTalkingGuy’s perspective. You are being very unempathetic, Bob.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The rare academic with strong scholarly bona fides and practical experience in public affairs.

A gratuitous comment. A range of academics are both scholars and have practical experience in public affairs.

I question how much she (positively) learned from clerking with Thomas and Kavanaugh, but I understand why he would lead with that. It's a bona fide thing. A Democrat would cite Sotomayor and Jackson.

Trump already appointed her as General Counsel of Education, but that might not have much staying power anyhow.

[Bob from Ohio]

Empathy is an important private virtue but is dangerous for judges because it gets misdirected.

Example: Criminal has rough childhood so gets probation for second time and then kills someone during his next crime. Empathy for him results in a public harm.

We saw this a lot in the 1960s/1970s, a big reason for the jump in crime which took decades to bring down.

[hobie]

Howsabout citing all the times where mercy produced good citizens. Or is this just more Willy Horton bullshit?

[s--con]

I'm sure she's great. And her connection to the Third Circuit is...? Nothing on her CV indicates one. She is licensed to practice in VA and MD, which are both very fine states that have much in common with PA, NJ, and DE.

Also, for what seats are she and Emil Bove nominated? I remember, not so far back in the day, when judicial nominations were announced "vice" the incumbent. (At least Mr. Bove's announcement identified him as "of Pennsylvania"... which narrows it down.)