President Trump To Nominate Minnesota Justice To Federal Court

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Trump is expected to announce 10 nominees for currently vacant spots on lower federal courts Monday. Among the candidates is Justice David R. Stras, a former law professor at the University of Minnesota and current member of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Stras also clerked for United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Stras will be nominated to the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, the New York Times reported. Stras became an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2010. His current term expires in January 2019.

This isn't the first time Trump has plucked from the University of Minnesota. Last month, Trump nominated Stephen Parente, a professor at the university, to the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Planning and Evaluation position.

Prior to his appointment to the court, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics. In addition, Stras was co-director of the Institute for Law and Politics at the University of Minnesota.

Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.

Following law school, Stras clerked for Melvin Brunetti of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the U.S.

Image via Minnesota Judicial Branch