However, Senate Republicans have vowed to block President Obama’s nominee for the lifetime position on the court.
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Last week, a source familiar with the selection process said the White House had narrowed the selection to three candidates: Srinivasan, Garland and Paul Watford, 48, a judge on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Sri Srinivasan, a moderate who would be the first Indian-American justice, has been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee.
“It’s clear what Republicans are planning to do”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
After that last point, Obama said he wanted a candidate who had experienced life outside academic or justice settings, so they would understand the way the law “affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly-changing times”.
This is not the first time Garland, who hails from President Obama’s home in Chicago, has been considered for a Supreme Court seat. It’s important that we don’t forget that the American people have spoken.
“The notion that the Majority Leader Senator McConnell, without knowing who the nominee was going to be pronounced the nomination dead even before [its] arrival is in some ways the height of arrogance”, he said.
The Republican National Committee is poised to take the battle over the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy to Democratic Senate candidates, including Russ Feingold. For example, Judge Kelly, a Harvard Law School classmate of Mr. Obama, is being criticized for getting a lenient plea deal for a child predator while she served as a federal public defender. Let the pundits and scholars debate the historical precedents over how nominees have been treated in the past, and whether Democrats or Republicans are more to blame over the poor treatment of judicial nominees in the Senate.
Srinivasan and Garland serve together on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has served as a springboard to the Supreme Court for several justices including Scalia in recent decades. Why would Republicans give in and hold a hearing which will lead to a Court majority they dislike? Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who has steadfastly refused to budge considering Obama’s eventual nominee, along with a group of vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in November. In the wake of Scalia’s death, the remaining eight justices represent an equal partisan split of four Democrats and four Republicans.
Without Scalia, the Supreme Court is evenly split with four liberals and four conservatives. It will be only pressure on the Senate, and particularly on Republican Senators up for reelection in blue states, that can get the Republican Senate to move on an Obama presidential nomination.
“We believe it is imperative that the President expeditiously name a nominee, and that the Senate expeditiously consider and vote on that nominee”, they wrote.
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The RNC’s campaign will involve targeting Democrats, including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernard Sanders, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and candidates in a host of contested states where Democrats have a significant chance of picking up victories in 2016. The most liberal Supreme Court by most measures was the Warren Court (1953-1969).
