Garland must get timely, fair hearings and an up-or-down vote

Garland’s nomination continues the president’s pattern of nominating experienced and distinguished individuals to the highest court in the land. Garland has served with distinction on the D.C. Court of Appeals and nobody can question his qualifications to serve on the high court, or his intelligence.

Since Justice Scalia’s death, Republican senators have been relentless in their threats to undermine the president’s constitutional authority and obstruct his nominee. We need to counter this obstruction as strongly as possible and make the political cost of the Republicans’ Supreme Court blockade too high for them to bear.

Tell Senate Republicans: The Supreme Court is not a political football. Hold timely, fair hearings and an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Garland, like every nominee to the highest court, deserves the chance to make his case to the Senate, in public view of the American people. While his background does not suggest he will be a progressive champion, he is also not the justice a conservative Republican would have nominated. In the end, it is President Obama’s constitutional duty to nominate Supreme Court justices, and Garland is clearly qualified.

Republicans’ refusal to participate in this process further underscores their inability to do the basic job of governing. Instead they are willing to subvert the Constitution in order to have a chance to appoint a justice who would oppose women’s health care, side with corporations over workers and the environment, and allow big money to continue to hijack our elections.

While belligerent Republican senators pander to the elements of their base who still refuse to accept the legitimacy of the first Black president, the president has fulfilled his constitutional duty and his promise to choose a nominee who “views the law not only as an intellectual exercise, but also grasps the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times.”

CREDO will fight to make sure Garland is afforded the same process every other nominee in our country’s history has been granted so we can continue to learn more about him and the type of jurist he will be, and so that every senator can go on the record in an up-or-down vote on his confirmation.

Tell Senate Republicans: The Supreme Court is not a political football. Hold timely, fair hearings and an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.