The Search For The 113th Supreme Court Justice, v1: Obama Nominates Merrick Garland

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TheBlondBomber said:
Merrick Garland and Sidney Runyan Thomas are the most qualified and one of them should be the nomination because of their experience as judges and prowess as Constitutional scholars. However, because they are white men, they have no shot despite there being no white, Protestant men on the court, and white Protestant men making up a large chunk of the country. They will get passed over by a less qualified minority to fulfill Obama's agenda of having a diverse court, as if diversity somehow helps the court determine the constitutionality of matters.
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Oh shut up.
 
ocean size said:
Oh shut up.
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Eloquent in its brevity.

Care to refute my point and show me someone more qualified than those two candidates? The only reason why they wouldn't be picked is because they are white men. Not ideology or anything like that. Garland is generally believed to be more liberal than someone like Sri.
 
TheBlondBomber said:
Eloquent in its brevity.

Care to refute my point and show me someone more qualified than those two candidates? The only reason why they wouldn't be picked is because they are white men. Not ideology or anything like that. Garland is generally believed to be more liberal than someone like Sri.
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Well, for starters Garland is 63 years old. Presidents like to get them in SCOTUS a little younger than that to maximize the amount of time they'll be on the bench.

Also, while Garland has more time as an appellate judge, he hasn't made anywhere near the amount of SCOTUS appointees that Sri has.

Ultimately, being "more qualified" depends on what you think the qualifications are. I agree that Merrick Garland is eminently qualified, and might have had a better chance of becoming a justice if he was not a white dude, but at this point he's got several things besides his race and sex which limit his appeal as a candidate, most notably his age.
 
PolishHeadlock said:
To the SD lawyers how accurate do you think the Segal/Cover score is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segal–Cover_score
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Hard to say. Obviously, it's accuracy is greatly limited by its methodology (i.e. look at what editorials say about their ideology and qualifications as opposed to actually finding the proof in the pudding). But in that it is judged perception instead of reality, I suppose it does a good job of it.
 
djacobox372 said:
No, no, this is not the same thing.

The minority party filibustering a nominee is very different and far more understandable then the majority party not even allowing anything to move forward.

Think of it this way: if the dems were the majority party and the filibuster was taken off the table, Obama could appoint the most radical liberal socialist judge he wanted, and it would just sail through. The GOP could all vote against it and it wouldn't matter. In this situation I wouldn't blame them for using the filibuster to exercise some degree of balance to the decision. This is what the dems did to Bush.

The GOP has set a new standard on majority party obstruction, which is, for the most part, unprecedented.
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Democratic Senators don't want Conservative Judges nominated by a Republican President.
Republican Senators don't want Liberal Judges nominated by a Democratic President.

This political game is as old as time, eventhough the sides, situation, and gravity does change each time. I do find it amusing whenever politicians try to takes the high ground and accuses each other of being dirty while wagging their fingers saying "noonono, what we did was completely different!"

After Scalia's untimely pasing, some Republican senators are taking it to a whole new level by announcing that they'll block any nomination from Obama, even before they even know who will be nominated, and pretty much everyone here agrees that those loudmouths gonna have to eat it when the nominee turns out to be someone talented and well-liked by both sides with bipartisant supports.

It's also utter and complete BS for any Democratic politicians to pretend that their hands are clean when it comes to this judicial-nominee obstruction business. Not when they have already destroyed - borked - the lives of so many perfectly good judges in the past, IN PUBLIC, all because of politics.

But if you have already long decided that every single judges ever nominated by Bush (or any Republican Presidents before him for that matter) who had their character destroyed publicly by Democratic Senators were all "radicals", "incompetent", or otherwise "professionally unfit for interpreting the law" at the Federal level, then there's really nothing left to debate about.
 
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ncordless said:
Well, for starters Garland is 63 years old. Presidents like to get them in SCOTUS a little younger than that to maximize the amount of time they'll be on the bench.

Also, while Garland has more time as an appellate judge, he hasn't made anywhere near the amount of SCOTUS appointees that Sri has.

Ultimately, being "more qualified" depends on what you think the qualifications are. I agree that Merrick Garland is eminently qualified, and might have had a better chance of becoming a justice if he was not a white dude, but at this point he's got several things besides his race and sex which limit his appeal as a candidate, most notably his age.
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There has been a recent trend of nominating younger justices, but RBG was 60 when she was nominated and has been going strong for 20+ years. I don't think age should be held against him as he'd still be one of the youngest on the court. And with his service on the appellate court, along with being Chief Judge for DC, along with arguing before the court (which Sri has also done numerous times), clerking for the court and his legal education makes him the most qualified by most metrics. But he's white, so dock him a few points.

This could be me being a dumb 1L, but I don't understand the bolded. What does it mean to "make a SCOTUS appointee"? Also, how many has Sri made in comparison to Garland?
 
Republican Judiciary chairman open to hearing for Supreme Court pick

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The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is leaving open the possibility of holding a hearing for PresidentBarack Obama's choice to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, amid signs of uncertainty about how Republicans would treat a nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said he backs Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's view that Obama's successor should make the nomination of a lifetime appointment. But Grassley didn't rule out holding confirmation hearings and a vote by his panel on an Obama selection.

"I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decision," Grassley said Tuesday in a conference call with Iowa radio reporters. "In other words, take it a step at a time."

Asked if he thought the controversy over filling the court vacancy might endanger his re-election chances this fall, Grassley said, "I think I have a responsibility to perform and I can't worry about the election. I've got to do my job as a senator, whatever it is. And there will be a lot of tough votes between now and the next election."

The No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, said Tuesday that he expects Obama to select a consensus candidate who could get bipartisan support.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a member of the Judiciary Committee, cautioned Republicans Tuesday against flatly ruling out any Obama nominee because of the possibility that the president selects someone who matches Scalia's conservative views.

"That's unlikely to happen, but I think we fall into the trap if we just simply say 'Sight unseen,' we fall into the trap of being obstructionist," Tillis said on "The Tyler Cralle Show" on WAAV in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Tillis said if Obama picks a candidate who embraces the president's views, "then we'll use every device available to block that nomination, wait till the American people voice their vote in November and then move forward with the nomination after the election, and most likely with the next president."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-supreme-court-scalia-nominee-20160216-story.html
 
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Arkain2K said:
Jane Kelly is included in that article by Fox, along with like 10 others.

May be I should just gather up all the photos of the possible nominees and include their government/wiki bio :)
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Godspeed.

It's just sad that the political climate couldn't allow for someone like, say Richard Posner, the most respected and cited judge of this generation to be nominated. He's far, far too conservative for the Democrats and he's an *actual* conservative, so his subsequent rulings on some social issues will make him too liberal for the GOP.
 
speakhandsforme said:
I'd add Jane Kelly from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to the list. She's been regarded as being on the short list for some time now. Like Sri, was unanimously approved.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/u...nsider-to-fill-antonin-scalias-seat.html?_r=0
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I'm a little baffled by Jane Kelly being on that list. I wouldn't stand a chance at getting a clerkship with Sri, but I was actually in the range of attributes that she accepts for clerks. Unanimous support must count for a lot.
 
Sri, Millett, and Watford are probably all fine.

Lynch and Nguyen, no. Those are too-political appointments. You don't send them up to the S. Ct.
 
Honestly what I want would be Obama steps down. Biden becomes president the recess appoints Obama to the Supreme Court
 
Obama: 'I intend to do my job' and nominate a qualified Supreme Court candidate
February 16, 2016
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President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that Republicans have no constitutional grounds to refuse to vote on a Supreme Court nominee, and he challenged his political foes in the Senate to rise above the "venom and rancor" that has paralyzed judicial nominations.

As Obama cast the dispute over filling the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia as a test of whether the Senate could function, there were early signs that Republican resistance could be eroding. Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley suggested he might be open to considering Obama's yet-to-be named nominee, an indication his party may be sensitive to Democrats' escalating charges of unchecked obstructionism.

"I intend to do my job between now and January 20 of 2017," Obama told reporters at a news conference. He said of the nation's senators, "I expect them to do their job as well."

Since Scalia's unexpected death at a Texas ranch on Saturday, White House lawyers and advisers have been scrambling to refine and vet a list of potential replacements, while also devising a strategy to push a candidate through the Republican-led Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he doesn't think Obama should be putting a candidate forward. The Kentucky senator, as well as several Republicans up for re-election this year, say Obama should leave the choice up to the next president. The November election, they argue, will give voters a chance to weigh in on the direction of the court.

Obama dismissed that notion, insisting he will put forward a replacement and believes the Senate will have "plenty of time" to give the nominee a fair hearing and a vote. Democrats say Obama has every right and a constitutional duty to fill vacancies on the court until he leaves office next January.

Obama conceded the dispute reflects years of escalating partisan hostilities over judicial nominations and said Democrats' hands are not bloodless. Years of bickering have left the public accustomed to a situation where "everything is blocked" — even when there's no ideological or substantive disagreement, he said.

"This would be a good moment for us to rise above it," he said.

The pace of judicial confirmation always slows in a presidential election year, as the party that does not control the White House holds out hope that its candidate will fill vacant judgeships rather than give lifetime tenure to the other party's choices. In the past, lawmakers have sometimes informally agreed to stop holding hearings on lower court nominations during campaign season.

Obama argued Tuesday that "the Supreme Court's different."

"There's no unwritten law that says that it can only be done in off years. That's not in the constitutional text," he said. "I'm amused when I hear people who claim to be strict interpreters of the Constitution suddenly reading into it a whole series of propositions that aren't there. There's more than enough time for the Senate to consider in a thoughtful way the record of a nominee that I present and to make a decision."

The White House has been looking for cracks in the Republicans opposition as it deliberates on a nominee. If Republicans indicate they may hold hearings, Obama would have greater reason to name a "consensus candidate," a moderate nominee who would be at least somewhat difficult for Republicans to reject. If there's virtually no chance of Republicans bending, Obama might go another route — picking a nominee who galvanizes support among the Democrats' liberal base and fires up interest groups in the election year.

Obama on Tuesday would not tip his hand — much.

"I'm going to present somebody who indisputably is qualified for the seat and any fair-minded person, even somebody who disagrees with my politics, would say would serve with honor and integrity on the court," he said.

Asked if that meant he was leaning toward a moderate, Obama said, bluntly, "No."

He would not comment on whether he would consider appointing a candidate during a congressional recess, a last-ditch maneuver likely to further inflame partisanship in Congress.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-supreme-court-scalia-nominee-20160216-story.html
 
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The precedent has already been set that this isn't enough to qualify:

-law degree from Chicago
-Yale Law School professor
-Solicitor General
-Attorney General
-Court of Appeals, DC Circuit
 
Zankou said:
Sri, Millett, and Watford are probably all fine.

Lynch and Nguyen, no. Those are too-political appointments. You don't send them up to the S. Ct.
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Nguyen is a very fair judge from what I've seen. Why do you think she is not qualified for the Supreme Court. Her Ninth Circuit decisions have been all well grounded from what I"ve seen.
 
TheBlondBomber said:
Merrick Garland and Sidney Runyan Thomas are the most qualified and one of them should be the nomination because of their experience as judges and prowess as Constitutional scholars. However, because they are white men, they have no shot despite there being no white, Protestant men on the court, and white Protestant men making up a large chunk of the country. They will get passed over by a less qualified minority to fulfill Obama's agenda of having a diverse court, as if diversity somehow helps the court determine the constitutionality of matters.
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Forget that Thomas wrote the dissent in one of my cases. If you dissent from a O'Scallon opinion I don't want you on the Supreme Court.
 
alanb said:
Forget that Thomas wrote the dissent in one of my cases. If you dissent from a O'Scallon opinion I don't want you on the Supreme Court.
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¿Que? The conceal and carry one?
 
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