After weeks of speculation about whether President Obama would nominate a liberal ideologue who is a minority or woman to replace the venerated conservative Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, Obama selected a respected 63-year old white man, described by legal experts as a centrist judge. Merrick Garland is the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.Circuit — considered by many to be the second highest court in the land. On MSNBC, SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein called Garland a nominee “who Republicans would have the hardest time saying ‘no’ to,” but he may never get a confirmation hearing by the Senate. Shortly after the announcement, the Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said the nomination would not be considered because this is an election year. McConnell said the “people should have a voice in filling the vacancy.” As the contentious campaign plays out over the next seven months, it will be interesting to see whether political pressure builds for the Senate to give Garland its consideration.
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Justice Antonin Scalia ‘wouldn’t be surprised’ if Supreme Court Ends the Death Penalty
Posted September 28th, 2015 at 1:17 pm (UTC-4)
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Add to that the growing revelations of prosecutorial misconduct, and the questions of constitutionality become too big for even conservatives to ignore. In fact, in recent years, conservatives have come to question the death penalty on moral as well as fiscal and good-governance grounds.
A Worthy Supreme Court Nominee
Any reasonable person would conclude that objections to Chief Judge Garland’s appointment are entirely partisan. Indeed, Chief Judge Garland is the best-prepared Supreme Court nominee since I graduated from law school in 1980.