President Obama is nominating Merrick Garland, chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. 

Garland has been on the D.C. Circuit court for 19 years, and seven sitting Republican senators were around back then to confirm him, including Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. In fact, Sen. Hatch commented just last week that Garland would be an acceptable nominee, telling Newsmax that Obama "could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man," adding that "he probably won't do that because this appointment is about the election." Hatch also sang Garland's praises back in 2010, and offered his support: "I have no doubts that Garland would get a lot of (Senate) votes. And I will do my best to help him get them." 

Ian Millhiser provides this background on Garland.

Garland is unquestionably qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. A 19 year veteran of the DC Circuit — a court that is widely viewed as the second-most powerful in the nation — Garland graduated with high honors from Harvard Law School. He clerked for Justice William Brennan, and spent a few years as a partner in the multinational law firm Arnold and Porter. He also held senior positions in the Justice Department, including a leadership role in the department’s criminal division and a stint as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General.

At age 63, Garland is also the oldest person nominated to the Supreme Court since President Nixon named Justice Lewis Powell in 1971. Thus, if confirmed, Garland is unlikely to match — or even approach — Justice Scalia’s nearly 30 years on the Supreme Court.

He's not a liberal firebrand, by any means. Both his age and his moderate tendencies are probably why Hatch put him forward as someone he thinks of as a reasonable appointee. Garland is conservative on criminal justice issues. In 2003, he even joined a ruling on the D.C. Circuit that effectively barred Guantanamo detainees from seeking relief in U.S. courts, a ruling which was reversed by the Supreme Court. Millhiser points to a 2010 analysis from SCOTUSblog's Tom Goldstein noting that "Judge Garland rarely votes in favor of criminal defendants' appeals of their convictions." Goldstein "identified only eight such published rulings," along with seven where "he voted to reverse the defendant's sentence in whole or in part, or to permit the defendant to raise a argument relating to sentencing on remand," in his tenure on the DC Circuit.

For all these reasons—and Hatch's endorsement—Garland is the smart choice for boxing Republicans in and demonstrating just how extreme and partisan they're being in their blockade. He's also a smart choice because he's the chief judge of the second most important court in the nation. He's going to be hard for the extremist groups to vilify—and the Judicial Crisis Network has $2 million to spend on ads starting right now to do so—and doesn't have a career to be ruined by being run through the promised Republican wringer, as so many younger potential nominees have.

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