Why Merrick Garland may be a difficult Supreme Court nominee to ignore

President Obama's nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is highly regarded on both sides of the aisle. But even Republican lawmakers who praise Garland say they refuse to hold a hearing.

|
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press
Federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland, stands with President Barack Obama as he is introduced as Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court during an announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House, in Washington, Wednesday, March 16, 2016.

In the face of Republicans’ continued vocal resistance to appointing a Supreme Court justice under the current White House, President Obama announced his nominee Wednesday to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.

His candidate, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Merrick Garland, is well-regarded on both sides of the aisle – 32 Republicans voted in favor of confirming him in his current job, and a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee even floated his name as a possible nominee just last week, calling him a "fine man."

"[Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man," Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah told Newsmax Friday. "He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants."

Since Mr. Obama’s official announcement, the Utah lawmaker has maintained his stance against going forward with the nomination process, contending that any appointment would be tainted by the polarized climate of the election cycle.

“Adding a Supreme Court nomination to the current polarized climate would serve only to undermine the Court’s independence,” he wrote in an op-ed on TIME.com Tuesday, “and drag the Court into the caustic atmosphere of the 2016 presidential race.”

Hatch followed up, however, saying that he would consider approving Garland's nomination after the general election in November, in a lame duck session before the next president takes office.

"He is a good man, but he shouldn't be brought up in this toxic environment," he told reporters Wednesday.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell echoed this notion on the Senate floor Wednesday, asserting that the party wants to "give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy."

As The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips notes, Republicans up for reelection this year will face pressure from their constituents and potential voters to consider the nominee. GOP incumbents from swing states are particularly vulnerable.

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in early March, nearly two in every three Americans say that the Senate should hold hearings on Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Among Republicans, 46 percent said yes, but the figure is substantially higher among independents – 62 percent.

Moderate Republicans who aren’t up for reelection also could tip the balance in favor of at least hearing Garland’s nomination. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, for instance, suggested that the Senate must seriously consider any nomination of a Supreme Court justice.

"More than any other appointment upon which the Senate is called to pass judgment,” she said in a statement said after Justice Scalia’s death in February, "nominees to the Supreme Court warrant in-depth consideration given the importance of their constitutional role and their lifetime tenure."

Sen. Thom Tillis, (R) of North Carolina, also has voiced reservations, warning against "[falling] into the trap of being obstructionists.”

Pundits and legal experts both praised him Wednesday as a candidate whose credentials made him difficult to ignore.

Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano called him “the most conservative nominee to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president in the modern era."

"He's not flashy. He doesn't have some academic theory driving his jurisprudence but decides the cases one at a time as they come before him," Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University Washington College of Law told CNN.

It would be "simply impossible," he added, for Republican politicians to oppose Garland based on his merits.

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 may be a difficult Supreme Court nominee to ignore
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2016/0316/Why-Merrick-Garland-may-be-a-difficult-Supreme-Court-nominee-to-ignore
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe