Returning to the institution where he taught constitutional law for over a decade, Barack Obama on Thursday said Republicans were pursuing a path that “erodes the institutional integrity of the judicial branch” by refusing to consider his supreme court nominee, Merrick Garland.
Addressing students in a discussion at the University of Chicago Law School, the president said his pick to replace the late justice Antonin Scalia was “as good of a judge as we have in this country” and deserved a fair hearing.
“He embodies and models what we want to see in our jurisprudence,” Obama said of Garland, chief judge of the US court of appeals for the DC circuit.
His remarks came as the Republican leadership in the US Senate remained steadfast in its opposition to filling the supreme court vacancy under Obama’s watch. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, declared earlier this week that it was “safe to say” there would be neither a vote nor a hearing on Garland’s nomination.
That position, Obama warned, threatened the core of American democracy.
“If you start getting into a situation in which the process of appointing judges is so broken, so partisan, that an eminently qualified jurist cannot even get a hearing, we are going to see the kind of sharp polarization that has come to characterize our electoral politics seeping into the system,” Obama said.
“At that point, people lose confidence in the ability of the courts to fairly adjudicate cases and controversies. And our democracy cannot afford that.”
The Obama administration and its Democratic allies are seeking to build a national campaign around the issue, hoping in particular to escalate pressure on a host of vulnerable Senate Republicans up for re-election this year.
One of them, Mark Kirk, took the step of meeting Garland and went so far as to say he would vote to confirm the judge. The Illinois senator even shared a handwritten letter from Obama on Thursday thanking him his “fair and responsible treatment” of Garland. Another Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, met Garland this week and said she was “more convinced than ever” that he should at least receive a hearing.
In total, more than a dozen Republicans have agreed to at least sit down with Garland – although some have insisted from the outset they will not waver in their opposition to proceeding any further. Republicans also face a potential backlash from the right, with conservative groups threatening to primary those who break from the party line.
Obama lamented during his Q&A that most Republicans had determined it was more important to placate their base “in a way that is dangerous”, and condemned those who had “not even shown the courtesy of meeting [Garland]”.
The status quo was unprecedented, he added, and left many important decisions before the court in the balance without a tie-breaking justice.
