Larisa Epatko/PBS Newshour
After Justice Anotonin Scalia passed away over the weekend while on a hunting trip in Texas at age 79, talk shows and various media outlets have floated names that could be on President Obama’s shortlist. Among them:
Srikanth Srinivasan, 48, US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A former clerk to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, he enjoyed unanimous bipartisan support when confirmed for the appeals court less than three years ago.
Jacqueline Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-American woman named to the state court in California, is pictured outside the court in Los Angeles on Aug. 15, 2002. (Photo by Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Jacqueline Nguyen, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco. Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1965 and moved to the US as a child. She worked as an assistant US attorney and a California judge before Obama first tapped her for a federal court in California. In 2012, she won bipartisan confirmation by the Senate to the appeals court. Srinivasan or Nguyen would be the first Asian-American Supre.
Paul Watford, 48, an Obama appointee to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Watford is black and was a federal prosecutor and former clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Considered a moderate, he was confirmed by the Senate 61-34 in 2012.
Merrick Garland, 63, chief judge of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. His name was floated in 2010 when Obama was nominating a successor to Justice John Paul Stevens. He is Harvard-educated and considered a judicial moderate.
Jane Kelly, US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Kelly was confirmed unanimously and quickly to the St. Louis-based court in 2013. At the time, she earned praise from Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee. She was a Harvard Law School classmate of President Obama.
The President has made it clear he will likely nominate someone before the end of his term in 2017.
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