On March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The following is excerpted from the president’s remarks at the White House following the announcement.
Of the many powers and responsibilities that the Constitution vests in the presidency, few are more consequential than appointing a Supreme Court justice — particularly one to succeed Justice Scalia, one of the most influential jurists of our time.
The men and women who sit on the Supreme Court are the final arbiters of American law. They safeguard our rights. They ensure that our system is one of laws and not men. They’re charged with the essential task of applying principles put to paper more than two centuries ago to some of the most challenging questions of our time.
So this is not a responsibility that I take lightly. It’s a decision that requires me to set aside short-term expediency and narrow politics so as to maintain faith with our founders and perhaps more importantly with future generations.
And today, after completing this exhaustive process, I’ve made my decision. I’ve selected a nominee who is widely recognized not only as one of America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness, and excellence.
These qualities and his long commitment to public service have earned him the respect and admiration of leaders from both sides of the aisle. He will ultimately bring that same character to bear on the Supreme Court, an institution in which he is uniquely prepared to serve immediately.
Today, I am nominating Chief Judge Merrick Brian Garland to join the Supreme Court.
He was born and raised in the Land of Lincoln, in my home town of Chicago, my home State of Illinois. His mother volunteered in the community. His father ran a small business out of their home. Inheriting that work ethic, Merrick became valedictorian of his public high school. He earned a scholarship to Harvard, where he graduated summa cum laude.
And he put himself through Harvard Law School by working as a tutor, by stocking shoes in a shoe store, and in what is always a painful moment for any young man, by selling his comic book collection.
Merrick graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, and the early years of his legal career bear all the traditional marks of excellence. He clerked for two of President Eisenhower’s judicial appointees, first for a legendary judge on the Second Circuit, Judge Henry Friendly, and then for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan.
Following his clerkships, Merrick joined a highly regarded law firm, with a practice focused on litigation and pro bono representation of disadvantaged Americans. Within four years, he earned a partnership, the dream of most lawyers. But in 1989, just months after that achievement, Merrick made a highly unusual career decision. He walked away from a comfortable and lucrative law practice to return to public service.
Merrick accepted a low-level job as a Federal prosecutor in President George H.W. Bush’s Administration. He took a 50 percent pay cut; traded in his elegant partner’s office for a windowless closet that smelled of stale cigarette smoke. This was a time when crime here in Washington had reached epidemic proportions, and he wanted to help. And he quickly made a name for himself going after corrupt politicians and violent criminals.
His sterling record as a prosecutor led him to the Justice Department, where he oversaw some of the most significant prosecutions in the 1990s, including overseeing every aspect of the Federal response to the Oklahoma City bombing. In the aftermath of that act of terror, when 168 people, many of them small children, were murdered, Merrick had one evening to say goodbye to his own young daughters before he boarded a plane to Oklahoma City, and he would remain there for weeks. He worked side by side with first responders, rescue workers, local and Federal law enforcement. He led the investigation and supervised the prosecution that brought Timothy McVeigh to justice.
But perhaps most important is the way he did it. Throughout the process, Merrick took pains to do everything by the book. When people offered to turn over evidence voluntarily, he refused, taking the harder route of obtaining the proper subpoenas instead, because Merrick would take no chances that someone who murdered innocent Americans might go free on a technicality.
Merrick also made a concerted effort to reach out to the victims and their families, updating them frequently on the case’s progress. Everywhere he went, he carried with him in his briefcase the program from the memorial service with each of the victims’ names inside, a constant searing reminder of why he had to succeed.
Judge Garland has often referred to his work on the Oklahoma City case as “the most important thing I have ever done in my life.” And through it all, he never lost touch with that community that he served. It’s no surprise, then, that soon after his work in Oklahoma City, Merrick was nominated to what’s often called the second-highest court in the land, the D.C. Circuit Court.
During that confirmation process, he earned overwhelming bipartisan praise from senators and legal experts alike.
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch [UT-R], who was then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, supported his nomination. Back then he said, “In all honesty, I would like to see one person come to this floor and say one reason why Merrick Garland does not deserve this position.”
Ultimately, Merrick was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, the second-highest court in the land, with votes from a majority of Democrats and a majority of Republicans. Three years ago, he was elevated to chief judge, and in his 19 years on the D.C. Circuit, Judge Garland has brought his trademark diligence, compassion, and unwavering regard for the rule of law to his work.
On a Circuit Court known for strong-minded judges on both ends of the spectrum, Judge Garland has earned a track record of building consensus as a thoughtful, fair-minded judge who follows the law. He’s shown a rare ability to bring together odd couples, assemble unlikely coalitions, persuade colleagues with wide-ranging judicial philosophies to sign onto his opinions.
And this record on the bench speaks, I believe, to Judge Garland’s fundamental temperament: his insistence that all views deserve a respectful hearing, his habit, to borrow a phrase from former Justice John Paul Stevens, of understanding before disagreeing and then disagreeing without being disagreeable. It speaks to his ability to persuade, to respond to the concerns of others with sound arguments and airtight logic.
As his former colleague on the D.C. Circuit and our current chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, once said, any time Judge Garland disagrees, you know you’re in a difficult area. At the same time, Chief Judge Garland is more than just a brilliant legal mind. He’s someone who has a keen understanding that justice is about more than abstract legal theories, more than some footnote in a dusty case book.
His life experience, his experience in places like Oklahoma City, informs his view that the law is more than an intellectual exercise. He understands the way law affects the daily reality of peoples’ lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times.
And throughout his jurisprudence runs a common thread, a dedication to protecting the basic rights of every American, a conviction that in a democracy, powerful voices must not be allowed to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.
To find someone with such a long career of public service marked by complex and sensitive issues, to find someone who just about everyone not only respects, but genuinely likes, that is rare, and it speaks to who Merrick Garland is, not just as a lawyer, but as a man. People respect the way he treats others, his genuine courtesy and respect for his colleagues and those who come before his court.
I said I would take this process seriously, and I did. I chose a serious man and an exemplary judge, Merrick Garland. Over my seven years as president, in all my conversations with senators from both parties in which I asked their views on qualified Supreme Court nominees, and this includes the previous two seats that I had to fill, the one name that has come up repeatedly from Republicans and Democrats alike is Merrick Garland.
Now, I recognize that we have entered the political season — or perhaps these days it never ends — a political season that is even noisier and more volatile than usual. I know that Republicans will point to Democrats who have made it hard for presidents to get their nominees confirmed. And they’re not wrong about that; there’s been politics involved in nominations in the past, although it should be pointed out that in each of those instances, Democrats ultimately confirmed a nominee put forward by a Republican president.
At a time when our politics are so polarized, at a time when norms and customs of political rhetoric and courtesy and comity are so often treated like they are disposable, this is precisely the time when we should play it straight and treat the process of appointing a Supreme Court justice with the seriousness and care it deserves, because our Supreme Court really is unique. It’s supposed to be above politics. It has to be. And it should stay that way.
Tomorrow, Judge Garland will travel to the Hill to begin meeting with senators one-on-one. I simply ask Republicans in the Senate to give him a fair hearing and then an up-or-down vote.
I have fulfilled my constitutional duty. Now it’s time for the Senate to do theirs.
As they did when they confirmed Merrick Garland to the D.C. Circuit, I ask that they confirm Merrick Garland now to the Supreme Court so that he can take his seat in time to fully participate in its work for the American people this fall. He is the right man for the job. He deserves to be confirmed. I could not be prouder of the work that he has already done on behalf of the American people. He deserves our thanks, and he deserves a fair hearing.
