Since the election, the country has been waiting with bated breath at who President-elect Donald Trump will nominate to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacant Supreme Court seat.

Recent Marist polling found that 80 percent of Americans believe that appointing originalists to the highest bench in the land was either an “immediate” or “important” priority. Now, short lists are circulating and the Trump transition team is reportedly holding meetings with potential nominees.

While during the election it seemed that the only requirements to fill the seat was a two-box checklist (“Pro-life” and politically conservative), when an entire branch of government has gotten so far away from its original purpose, it requires a bit more than that.

Here’s what Trump’s team (and eventually the Senate) ought to be asking candidates:

1. What are rights, and what does the Constitution have to do with them?

One of the most visible consequences of the judicial oligarchy is a never-ending regime of ever-changing rights. Rather than being fundamental, transcendent, and bound up with our human dignity, “rights” are now construed to mean whatever the state wants them to mean.

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2. What does the 14^th Amendment really do?

The 14th Amendment was originally written with the intent of undoing the legal atrocities of chattel slavery. Since then, its provisions have been used as a blanket justification to codify a never-ending list of positive rights into the body of constitutional case law. This modern understanding of the amendment has not only been used to create “rights” to abortion and same-sex marriage, but has also been used by leftist judges to arbitrarily manufacture “rights” to early voting, transgender bathrooms, and a host of other issues.

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3. Does the Supreme Court create “settled law”? Is it the final arbiter?

What the founders envisioned as the weakest branch of government has now become a place where political discourse goes to die. Antonin Scalia pointed out as much in the Obergefell decision months before his death. Is Obergefell v. Hodges truly “settled law”? 

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4. What is the Supreme Court’s role?

This is an area ripe for review. If the court isn’t meant to act as a super legislature – as it has been doing for the past few decades – then what is it meant to do? The best answer for this would be to rule on issues of statute – along with its areas of original jurisdiction – while sharing the role of constitutional interpretation along with the other branches and the states.

However, the pithiest answer might be, “Whatever the Constitution and the Congress allow it to rule on, and nothing more.”

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These questions don’t nearly encompass the breadth of what should be asked of a worthy potential jurist the American people want to see Justice Scalia succeeded by someone who understands our constituting document as written, they ought to be first on the list.