Why Merrick Garland nomination comes down to person vs. principle

President Obama wants the Senate to focus on the merits of Merrick Garland, the well-regarded chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Republicans want to focus on having the next president choose the nominee.

|
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House after being nominated by President Barack Obama to the US Supreme Court in Washington March 16.

The coming battle over President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee might be summed up in three words: person versus principle.

That’s because Mr. Obama wants this political fight to focus on the qualifications and personality of federal judge Merrick Garland, his pick to fill the vacant seat of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The relatively moderate Judge Garland is well regarded on both sides of the ideological aisle: In 1997, 32 Republican senators voted to confirm him to his current position as chief judge of the federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Seven of those GOP lawmakers are still serving.

Republicans want the focus to remain instead on a principle – namely, their insistence that the next Supreme Court nominee be appointed by whoever wins the November presidential election. They don’t want to get dragged into discussing a particular person, for worry that it would make it difficult for the GOP to keep a united front against considering the nomination at all.

In that context, Garland might be the Republicans’ nightmare. Or if not a nightmare, a little disquiet at bedtime, at the least.

Obama appears to have chosen a nominee calculated to put lots of pressure on Republicans to agree to personal meetings and/or a confirmation hearing. He could have picked a liberal firebrand intended to fire up Democrats for the November vote, but he didn’t.

For one thing, Garland is not a long-term replacement for Justice Scalia. At 63, he is the oldest Supreme Court nominee in 40 years. He would not add a liberal vote to the high court balance for a generation.

Not that he’s considered a far lefty. Many GOP senators praised him on the floor during his 1997 hearings. Some currently describe him as a fine judge.

He’s also a native Midwesterner (Illinois), meaning he could bring some geographical diversity to a court where all other members, except Chief Justice John Roberts, hail from a state with an ocean coastline.

But in other ways Garland might be more of the same-old. He’s a white male with a Harvard Law degree – not exactly a résumé in short supply at the court.

And for Republicans, he might violate another principle – the one where they try to keep the high court as conservative as possible. While he’s not a liberal, he’s not a conservative in the mold of Scalia, either. By some measures he’d be the third-most liberal justice on the court if confirmed.

Given the stakes inherent in Supreme Court decisions, that’s why the Senate GOP is committed to delay, delay. They’re trying to head off any Democratic replacement for Scalia, if at all possible. For that they’re willing to take their chances with an electoral roll of the dice – even if it might produce President Trump.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Why Merrick Garland nomination comes down to person vs. principle
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2016/0316/Why-Merrick-Garland-nomination-comes-down-to-person-vs.-principle
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe