Our series of profiles of potential nominees to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens continues with Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Judge Garland’s credentials are impeccable.  An honors graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, he clerked for Judge Henry Friendly of the Second Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice, William Brennan.  He served as Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States from 1979 to 1981.  He then entered private practice with Arnold & Porter in Washington D.C.  In 1989 he returned to the Justice Department as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.  After three years, he returned to Arnold & Porter but in 1993 he returned once more to public service when he was appointed Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division.  In this role he supervised a number of high profile cases such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the Unabomber case. It has been noted that Judge Garland’s background is very similar to that of Chief Justice Roberts.

President Clinton appointed Judge Garland to the D.C. Circuit in 1995.  His appointment was held up for political reasons.  Republican senators, then in the majority, had no issues with Judge Garland’s qualifications or judicial philosophy, but argued that the D.C. Circuit did not need additional judges in light of its case load.  Judge Garland was finally confirmed in 1997.

Judge Garland is widely recognized as an expert on antitrust and, particularly, administrative law.  Interestingly, in the 1980s Garland was involved in an academic debate over Cass Sunstein, currently Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and a person frequently mentioned as a potential Supreme Court candidate.  The subject of the debate was the scope and purpose of judicial review of administrative agencies.  Generally, Sunstein favored a “hard look” approach to agency decisions, scrutinizing them to assure that they had considered the interests of all relevant stakeholders.  Garland, by contrast, urged that the focus of review should not be so much upon representation but upon ensuring fidelity to the language and purpose of Congress. Other writings urge that the states be free to make policy choices and that federal regulations, particularly economic ones, should not preempt them.

The case load of the D.C. Circuit is atypical, with much of its business coming from the regulatory agencies.  Join us below the jump for a review of some of Judge Garland’s notable decisions.

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Our series of profiles of possible Supreme Court nominees to replace the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens continues with the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.

After finishing at the top of her class at Santa Clara University — earning a Truman Scholarship and graduating summa cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors — Napolitano attended the University of Virginia Law School. After clerking for Ninth Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder, Napolitano began ten years in private practice in Phoenix. While in private practice, Napolitano was part of the team representing Anita Hill in connection with her testimony at Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings. She also participated in the briefing in Air Line Pilots Ass’n v. O’Neill, 499 US 65 (1991), which involved the standards applicable to determining whether a union has breached its duty of fair representation.

Napolitano’s public career began in 1993, when President Clinton appointed her United States Attorney for Arizona. During her five years in that position, she prosecuted over 6,000 immigration cases and made cross-border crime a priority. Napolitano also led the investigation of Michael Fortier in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing.

She was elected state Attorney General in 1998. During her four years in that position, she focused on consumer protection. A defender of the death penalty, Napolitano argued Ring v. Arizona, 536 US 584 (2002), where the Supreme Court held that permitting judges to determine the facts necessary to qualify a defendant for the death penalty violated the Sixth Amendment.

In 2002, Napolitano was narrowly elected Governor. In her first month, Napolitano proposed a budget eliminating a $1 billion budget surplus without tax increases. During her two terms, Napolitano:

• Focused on immigration issues, ordering the National Guard to the Mexican border and significantly toughening sanctions on employers for hiring undocumented workers;
   
• Promoted a prescription drug plan and improved care in long-term living facilities for seniors;
   
• Championed education reform, including voluntary full-day kindergarten programs; and
   
• Reformed the state’s Child Protective Services.

When Napolitano proposed giving a children’s book to every first-grader in Arizona, rather than funding the program through the state budget, she spent three years raising nearly a half-million dollars in private funds to make the program possible.

In 2005, Time named Napolitano one of America’s Five Best Governors.  A year later, Napolitano was named by the White House Project as one of the eight women most likely to become the first female President.  Napolitano served as Chair of the National Governors Association from 2006 to 2007.  She was confirmed as the first woman Secretary of Homeland Security in January 2009. Secretary Napolitano’s experience as a prosecutor and government official, dealing with the practical impact of the law on everyday lives, places her among the President’s potential Supreme Court nominees from outside the realms of the Federal appellate courts and academia.

We continue our profiles of short-listed potential nominees with Leah Ward Sears, former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court.

Justice Sears was born in 1955 in Heidelberg, Germany, where her father served as a colonel in the Army.  Her family later settled in Savannah, Georgia, and she attended high school there.  She received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, J.D. from Emory University School of Law, and, later, an LLM from the University of Virginia Law School in 1995.  After graduating from law school she joined the Atlanta law firm of Alston & Bird. 

Five years later Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young appointed Sears to Atlanta’s City Traffic Court, and three years after that, in 1988, she was elected to the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia – the first African-American woman to hold this position in Georgia.  In 1992 Georgia governor Zell Miller appointed her to Georgia’s Supreme Court.  She was the first woman and the youngest judge (36) to sit on that court.  She became Chief Justice in 2005 and retired from the court in 2009 when her term as Chief Justice ended.  She is now with the law firm of Schiff Hardin, LLP, in Atlanta. 

Justice Sears was among those considered last year to replace Justice David Souter.

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