Guns and religion get special mention as Trump’s team sketches vision for US Supreme Court

Gun rights, religious freedom and states’ rights were worth a mention when US President-elect Donald Trump’s team laid out his vision of the Constitution - and the Supreme Court that interprets it.

Equal protection and due process of law, not so much.

In the most detailed description yet of what Trump will seek when he selects Supreme Court justices and other federal judges, his transition team this week posted a two-paragraph statement that could double as a conservative wish list.

The statement promises that Trump will nominate justices - and lower court judges - who will use the “originalist” school of constitutional interpretation popularised by Justice Antonin Scalia, whose February 13 death left a still-pending vacancy.

The web page makes no mention of the list of 21 people that Trump has said will be his exclusive source for Supreme Court nominations. But it singles out the constitutional provisions that are longtime favourites of legal conservatives.

“He will defend Americans’ fundamental rights to free speech, religious liberty, keeping and bearing arms, and all other rights guaranteed to them in the Bill of Rights and other constitutional provisions,” the statement says. “This includes the Tenth Amendment guarantee that many areas of governance are left to the people and the States, and are not the role of the federal government to fulfil.”