Merrick Garland
…Garland was considered twice to fill vacated seats on the United States Supreme Court in 2009 and 2010, before finally being nominated in 2016 by President Barack Obama for the seat left vacant by the death of conservative Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.[72]
On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died.[79] Later that day, Senate Republicans led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement that they would not consider any nominee put forth by Obama, and that a Supreme Court nomination should be left to the next President of the United States.[80][81][82] President Obama responded that he intended to "fulfill my constitutional duty to appoint a judge to our highest court,"[83][84] and that there was no "well established tradition" that a president could not fill a Supreme Court vacancy during the U.S. President's last year in office.[85]
In early March 2016, The New York Times reported that Garland was being vetted by the Obama Administration as a potential nominee. A week later, Garland was named as one of three judges on the President's "short list" (along with Judge Sri Srinivasan, also of the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Paul J. Watford of the Ninth Circuit). Obama interviewed all three leading contenders, as well as two others who were being considered: Judge Jane L. Kelly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.[86] Soon afterward, Senator Orrin Hatch, President pro tempore of the United States Senate and the most senior Republican Senator, predicted that President Obama would "name someone the liberal Democratic base wants" even though he "could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man."[87] Five days later, on March 16, Obama formally nominated Garland to the vacant post of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.[88][89]
Garland had more federal judicial experience than any other Supreme Court nominee in history,[36] and was the oldest Supreme Court nominee since Lewis F. Powell Jr. in 1971.[90] The American Bar Association (ABA) Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary unanimously rated Garland "well-qualified" (the committee's highest rating) to sit on the Supreme Court.[91]
Under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate's Republican majority refused to consider Garland's nomination, holding "no hearings, no votes, no action whatsoever" on the nomination.[92][93][94] McConnell's categorical refusal to hold hearings on Garland's nomination was described by political scientists and legal scholars as unprecedented,[93][95][96][97] McConnell's choice to lead a Republican blockade of the nomination was described as a "culmination of [his] confrontational style,"[98] and an example of constitutional hardball.[99] Yascha Mounk called it a "blatant abuse of constitutional norms."[100]
After a period of 293 days, Garland's nomination expired on January 3, 2017, at the end of the 114th Congress.[101] It was the longest confirmation delay of a Supreme Court nominee in history, far exceeding the 125-day delay faced by the ultimately confirmed Justice Louis Brandeis in 1916.[102] On January 31, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the Court vacancy.[103] On April 7, 2017, the Senate confirmed Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court.
McConnell went on to boast about stopping Garland's nomination, saying in August 2016, "one of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, 'Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.'"[104][105] In April 2018, McConnell said the decision not to act upon the Garland nomination was "the most consequential decision I've made in my entire public career".[106]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland