President Barack Obama made two successful appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States. During his final year in office, Obama had an opportunity to fill a third Supreme Court vacancy. On March 16, 2016, he nominated Merrick Garland, the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Republican leaders in the Senate announced they planned to withhold voting on any potential nominee until a new president was elected.
About Barack Obama Supreme Court candidates in brief
President Barack Obama made two successful appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States. During his final year in office, Obama had an opportunity to fill a third Supreme Court vacancy. On March 16, 2016, he nominated Merrick Garland, the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Republican leaders in the Senate announced that they planned to withhold voting on any potential nominee until a new president was elected. During the 109th Congress, then-Senator Obama voted against both of President George W. Bush’s nominees to the Court. in 2007, Obama stated his opposition to John Roberts, saying: “We need somebody who’s got the heart – the empathy – to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom” Obama said in 2007: “I think the Constitution can be interpreted in so many ways. And part of the role of the Court is that it is going to protect people who may be vulnerable in the political process, the outsider, the minority, those who don’t have a lot of clout” In 2007, he said: “When you look at what makes a Supreme Court justice great, it’s not just the particular issue and how they rule, but it’s their conception of the court’s conception of that particular issue” In 2008, Obama said: “I have found that in almost every case, he consistently sides on behalf of the powerful against the powerless.” In 2009, he added: “And that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges….
I’ll look at the constitutional law that I was taught for 10 years, and that’s what I’ve been taught for the last 10 years.” In 2010, he wrote: “If we’re only looking at academics or people who’ve been in the legal profession for a long time, we can’t find people who have been on the Court for decades.’ “In those 5 percent of hard cases, the constitutional text will not be directly on point,” he said in a speech in 2007. “The critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart,’ he said. “And we need somebody with the empathy to understand what it’S like to being poor or African-American or disabled or gay or old – and that’ll be the criteria’.. .. The judge will have to have the heart, too, to be able to empathize with those who are poor or black or old or disabled, and have the courage to stand up for what they believe in, and to fight for what’s right, even if it’s hard to do.“ In 2008 he said, “If we’re looking at people who’ve been in life for a very long time and have been through a lot, we have to look at their hearts, too. And we need a judge who has the heart to have that empathy, too”
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