Grassley sees possibility of third Iowan on Supreme Court

CEDAR RAPIDS - With two judges from his home state on President-Elect Donald Trump's list of possible nominees, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley sees a 'good chance” for an Iowan to sit on the country's highest court.

However, the freshly re-elected Grassley said it's not his personal mission to see an Iowan put on the Supreme Court for the third time in history.

'I only have a personal stake in just one thing, and that's getting strict constructionists on the Supreme Court,” Grassley said following the election.

Among the 20 strict constructionists Trump identified as possible nominees are Steven Colloton and Edward Mansfield.

Colloton, an Iowa City native and Yale Law School graduate, serves on the Eighth Circuit Court of appeals. He clerked for former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Before joining the Eighth Circuit Court, he was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Iowa from 1990 to 1991. Colloton also was an associate independent counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in 1995 and 1996.

'I think his (Colloton's) record is very clear when I suggested him to George W. Bush as a strict constructionist and being, you might say, a disciple because he was a clerk for Justice Rehnquist,” Grassley said. 'I think he falls very much into that pattern of a person who ought to be considered.”

Mansfield, also a Yale Law School graduate, was born in Massachusetts and was an adjunct professor at Drake University in Des Moines. He was appointed to the Iowa Supreme Court by Gov. Terry Branstad in 2011, after having served on the Iowa Court of Appeals.

He was a former clerk with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit worked in the private sector and has been teaching as an adjunct law professor at Drake University since 1997.

'Obviously, I've never done that before,” Grassley said about putting an Iowan on the court. 'I don't know the last time a United States senator (from Iowa) did put somebody on the Supreme Court.

'It could have been when the guy from Keokuk went on in 1862 or the dean of the Iowa Law School went on in 1943. I suppose Iowa senators had something to do with that, but not since.”

Iowans who have served on the Supreme Court include Abraham Lincoln appointee Samuel Freeman Miller from 1862-90, and Franklin Roosevelt appointee Wiley Blount Rutledge from 1943-49.

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