President Barack Obama has nominated a US appeals court judge Merrick Garland to the supreme court, hoping to fill a swing seat on the court with a moderate judge first nominated by president Bill Clinton.
Judge Garland (63) is the chief judge for the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia, a court that often feeds the Supreme Court.
Mr Obama’s pick will trigger a confrontation with Republicans who have refused to consider his nomination in a presidential election year.
The judge would take the seat of conservative judge Antonin Scalia, who died last month, leaving behind a seat that could tip the ideological balance of power on the court between conservatives and liberal justices.
Announcing his nomination in remarks from the White House Rose Garden, Mr Obama, standing next to his nominee, said that the DC chief judge was not only recognised as "one of America's sharpest legal minds" but was also known for the "spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence" that he brought to his work.
Pre-empting the expected political backlash seeking to block his appointment, Mr Obama noted how a majority of Republicans supported Judge Garland’s appointment to the DC circuit appeals court in 1997 and his elevation to that court’s chief judge in 2010.
The president said that he had fulfilled his constitution duty by naming a judge to fill an empty court seat and now it was up to the Senate to fulfil theirs, in a remarks to an audience that included senior Democratic senators Harry Reid and Patrick Leahy.
“I said I would take this process seriously, and I did, I chose a serious man and an exemplary judge, Merrick Garland,” he said.
Mr Obama urged Congress to rise above the partisan politics of “political season” and to hold a confirm hearing and install the new judge to the highest US court.
“I simply ask Republicans in the Senate to give him a fair hearing and then an up or down vote. If you don’t, then it will not only be an abdication of the Senate’s constitutional duty, it will indicate a process for nominating and confirming judges that is beyond repair,” he said.
“It will mean everything is subject to the most partisan of politics, everything. It will provoke an endless cycle of more tit-for-tat and make it increasingly possible for any president, Democrat or Republican, to carry out their constitutional function.
Reassuring members of Congress that he intends to act as a jurist focused only on the law, an emotional Judge Garland acknowledged that justices must put aside their personal views and preferences and “follow the law, not make it.”
“Fidelity to the constitution and the law has been the cornerstone of my professional life and it is the hallmark of the kind of judge I have tried to be for the last 18 years,” he said.
“If the Senate sees fit to confirm to the position for which I have been nominated today, I promise to continue on that course.”
Judge Garland, who is Jewish, clerked for two judges appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and was the prosecutor in the Justice Department investigations into domestic acts of terrorism, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
He was confirmed to the DC Circuit in 1997 on a vote of 76 to 23 and was considered for a Supreme Court posting by the president in 2010.
Mr Obama’s political opponents in Congress want the pivotal court appointment deferred until the next president is in the White House.
The party’s majority leader in the Republican-led Senate, Mitch McConnell, said that the president made the nomination “to politicise it for the purposes of the election”.
Orrin Hatch, the Senate’s most senior Republican and third in line to the US presidency, responded to Mr Obama referring to his strong 1997 support of Judge Garland’s appointment to the DC appeals court, the country’s second highest court, saying he thought “highly” of the judge.
“But this nomination doesn’t in any way change current circumstances. I remain convinced that the best way for the Senate to do its job is to conduct the confirmation process after this toxic presidential election season is over,” he said in a statement.
The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan backed his colleagues in the Senate for opposing the nomination.
“This has never been about who the nominee is. It is about a basic principle,” said Mr Ryan, adding that the president had the right to nominate a judge and the Senate has the right not confirm them.
“We should let the American people decide the direction of the court,” he said.
