By nominating Judge Merrick Garland to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, President Barack Obama fulfilled his constitutional obligation.
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Garland, the chief judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, deserves a confirmation hearing and a vote.
The committee responsible for helping GOP candidates win their Senate races, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, describes federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland as a “liberal, an activist and one of Obama’s most reliable allies in the judicial system”.
President Barack Obama carries through with his promise to select a nominee for the Supreme Court. “If we don’t begin the process now, this won’t happen until not next January – it won’t happen until probably next June, and that is totally unfair to the American people”, Biden told WCCO.
Wisconsin’s own state Supreme Court election has become a spectacle of its own, garnering much more attention than most state court elections in the past.
“I just don’t see him moving the dial very much among Republican senators who are opposed to an Obama selection”, he said. It is clear about the president’s authority to nominate justices.
“It provides us an opportunity among all the partisanship… for this body show that we will rise above that… and show we are not susceptible to the winds of the time”, Booker said.
Historically, the appointment of Supreme Court justices during election years has significant precedent.
However if the nomination would be approved, Garland may not reflect well on Obama’s legacy because he does not have the same outlook on the law as the president and some of the other liberal justices.
Hatch and Flake could influence the panel’s decision on whether or not to hold confirmation hearings for Garland.
McConnell said Wednesday that the nomination was politically motivated by Obama, something that Amar takes issue with. Even the current Chief Justice, John Roberts, has praised him by saying that “anytime Judge Garland disagrees, you know you’re in a hard area”.
LGBT legal group Lambda Legal called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to “ask comprehensive and probing questions to evaluate Judge Garland’s ability to be a fair and impartial member of our highest court rather than rejecting his nomination out-of-hand in partisan fashion, without even a hearing”. The Senate at that time voted to confirm Garland in a bipartisan 76-23 vote.
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“President Obama is within his constitutional rights to submit a nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy, and the Senate is within its constitutional rights to determine how it will exercise its advice and consent responsibilities, ” he said.
