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Obama Chooses Merrick Garland for Supreme Court
| New York Times | - |
WASHINGTON
- President Obama on Wednesday said he would nominate Merrick B.
Garland as the nation's 113th Supreme Court justice, choosing a centrist
appeals court judge for the lifetime appointment and daring Republican
senators to refuse ...
Obama Discusses Supreme Court Nominee
The president, in nominating Merrick
B. Garland to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, described the appeals
court judge as “one of America’s sharpest legal minds.”
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date March 16, 2016.
Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday said he would nominate Merrick B. Garland as the nation’s 113th Supreme Court
justice, choosing a centrist appeals court judge for the lifetime
appointment and daring Republican senators to refuse consideration of a
jurist who is highly regarded throughout Washington.
Mr.
Obama introduced Judge Garland to an audience of his family members,
activists, and White House staff in the Rose Garden Wednesday morning,
describing him as exceptionally qualified to serve on the Supreme Court
in the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in
February.
The
president said Judge Garland is “widely recognized not only as one of
America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a
spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence.
These qualities and his long commitment to public service have earned
him the respect and admiration from leaders from both sides of the
aisle.”
He
added that Judge Garland “will ultimately bring that same character to
bear on the Supreme Court, an institution on which he is uniquely
prepared to serve immediately.”
Mr.
Obama said it is tempting to make the confirmation process “an
extension of our divided politics.” But he warned that “to go down that
path would be wrong.”
Mr.
Obama demanded a fair hearing for Judge Garland and said that refusing
to even consider his nomination would provoke “an endless cycle of more
tit for tat” that would undermine the democratic process for years to
come.
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“I
simply ask Republicans in the Senate to give him a fair hearing, and
then an up or down vote,” Mr. Obama said. “If you don’t, then it will
not only be an abdication of the Senate’s constitutional duty, it will
indicate a process for nominating and confirming judges that is beyond
repair.”
In
brief remarks, Judge Garland emotionally described his legal career as a
prosecutor and a judge, saying that “fidelity to the Constitution and
the law have been the cornerstone of my professional life.” He said that
if the Senate confirmed him, he promised to “continue on that course.”
At
the end of the Rose Garden ceremony — which took place during idyllic
weather on an unusually warm mid-March day with the garden’s Tulip
Magnolia trees covered in pink blossoms — much of the Senate’s
Democratic leadership warmly greeted Lynn Garland, Judge Garland’s wife,
and one of their daughters in something akin to a receiving line.
Ms.
Garland was beaming throughout the greetings, hugging some of the most
powerful people in the country. As the granddaughter of a presidential
counsel, Ms. Garland is well known among this city’s elite.
In answer to a shouted question regarding her husband’s nomination, Ms. Garland shyly smiled but said nothing to reporters.
Shortly
after the ceremony, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, took
to the Senate floor to reiterate his position that the nomination
process should be blocked.
“The
American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate
Judge Garland for Senate consideration,” Mr. McConnell said. “The next
president may also nominate someone very different. Either way, our view
is this: Give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy.”
Graphic
Why Obama Nominated Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court
Merrick B. Garland is a candidate who had support from
Republicans in the past but would still move the court in a progressive
direction.
In
choosing Judge Garland, a well-known moderate who has drawn bipartisan
support over decades, Mr. Obama was essentially daring Republicans to
press their election-year confirmation fight over a judge many of them
have publicly praised and who would be difficult for them to reject,
particularly if a Democrat were to win the November presidential
election and they faced the prospect of a more liberal nominee in 2017.
Shortly
after the Rose Garden ceremony, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority
leader, took to the Senate floor to reiterate his position that the
nomination process should be blocked.
“The
American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate
Judge Garland for Senate consideration,” Mr. McConnell said. “The next
president may also nominate someone very different. Either way, our view
is this: Give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy.”
Judge
Garland persevered through a lengthy political battle in the mid-1990s
that delayed his own confirmation to the United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit by more than a year. Senator
Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, argued at the time that the
vacancy should not be filled.
Twenty
years later, Mr. Grassley and other Republicans are again standing in
the way of Judge Garland’s appointment, arguing that the next president
should be the one to pick the successor to Justice Scalia. Republicans
in the Senate and on the presidential campaign trail vowed to stand firm
against whomever Mr. Obama chose.
In
remarks Monday, Mr. Obama chastised Republicans for taking that stand,
demanding that the Republican-controlled Senate fulfill its
responsibility to consider Judge Garland and hold a timely vote on his
nomination. Do do anything else would be irresponsible, he said.
Judge
Garland is often described as brilliant and, at 63, is somewhat older
for a Supreme Court nominee. He is two years older than Chief Justice
John G. Roberts Jr., who has been with the court for more than 10 years.
The two served together on the appeals court and are said to be
friends.
Supreme
Court nominees tend to be in their early 50s. In choosing Judge
Garland, Mr. Obama very likely gave away the possibility of a justice
who would serve on the Supreme Court perhaps three decades. Instead, he
imposed a sort of actuarial term limit on the nomination and thus his
legacy, offering Senate Republicans a compromise not only on ideology,
but also on tenure.
The Oklahoma City bombing case in 1995 helped shape Judge Garland’s professional life.
He coordinated the Justice Department’s response, starting the case
against the bombers and eventually supervising their prosecution.
Judge
Garland insisted on being sent to the scene even as bodies were being
pulled out of the wreckage, said Jamie S. Gorelick, then the deputy
attorney general.
“At
the time, he said to me the equivalent of ‘Send me in, coach,’” Ms.
Gorelick said. “He worked around the clock, and he was flawless.”
White
House officials on Wednesday noted that Judge Garland was confirmed to
his current post in 1997 with the support of seven sitting Republicans:
Senators Dan Coats of Indiana, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan
Collins of Maine, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma,
John McCain of Arizona, Pat Roberts of Kansas.
In
an email on Wednesday just before Mr. Obama was to appear in the Rose
Garden to formally nominate him, one official said that Mr. Hatch said
this year that Mr. Obama “could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a
fine man.” They noted that Mr. Hatch was quoted in 2010 as saying that
Judge Garland would be a “consensus nominee” if he had been picked that
year.
The
White House also cited positive comments about Judge Garland from Chief
Justice Roberts, the Republican governors of Oklahoma and Iowa, and
former Republican officials in the Justice Department.
Graphic
Supreme Court Nominees Considered in Election Years Are Usually Confirmed
Since 1900, the Senate has voted on eight Supreme Court
nominees during an election year. Six were confirmed.
Because
of his position, disposition and bipartisan popularity, Judge Garland
has been on Mr. Obama’s shortlist of potential nominees for years. In
2010, when Mr. Obama interviewed him for the slot that he instead gave
to Justice Elena Kagan, Mr. Hatch said publicly that he had urged Mr.
Obama to nominate Judge Garland.
“I know Merrick Garland very well,” Mr. Hatch said at the time. “He would be very well supported by all sides.”
In
an email to supporters early Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama said he
considered three principles in making his choice: whether the person
possessed “an independent mind, unimpeachable credentials and an
unquestionable mastery of law”; whether the nominee recognized “the
limits of the judiciary’s role”; and whether his choice understood that
“justice is not about abstract legal theory, nor some footnote in a
dusty casebook.”
Mr.
Obama said that he was “confident you’ll share my conviction that this
American is not only eminently qualified to be a Supreme Court justice,
but deserves a fair hearing and an up-or-down vote.”
The White House has created a new Twitter handle, he said — @SCOTUSnom — and he urged people to follow it for “all the facts and up-to-date information.”
At
a news conference on Thursday, Mr. Obama said that Republicans must
“decide whether they want to follow the Constitution and abide by the
rules of fair play that ultimately undergird our democracy and that
ensure that the Supreme Court does not just become one more extension of
our polarized politics.”
Republican
senators have urged the president to hold off on a nomination, saying
the next president should make the pick after voters express their
preference in the presidential election. Senator Mitch McConnell of
Kentucky, the Republican leader, has repeatedly said he would oppose any
nomination until next year.
“President
Obama is getting dangerously close to narrowing down the field of
potential candidates for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Mr.
McConnell warned his supporters in a fund-raising appeal last month.
The
outcome of the Washington clash could determine whether Mr. Obama gets
to set the direction of American jurisprudence for decades. After the
death last month of Mr. Scalia, a leading conservative, the court is
evenly divided, with four liberal justices and four conservatives. A new
justice appointed by Mr. Obama could be the deciding vote in several
close cases.
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