Who Are Merrick Garland And Sri Srinivasan? What To Know About Obama’s Likely Supreme Court Nominees

UPDATE: 10:05 a.m. EDT — Congressional sources said Wednesday morning that President Barack Obama is set to nominate Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Associated Press reported. Obama iis expected to reveal his nominee at an 11 a.m. EDT press conference.

Original Story:

After about a monthlong wait, President Barack Obama will announce Wednesday his nominee to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. On the reported short list for Obama’s nomination are two judges who serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit: Chief Judge Merrick Garland and Judge Sri Srinivasan.

Garland is a more moderate judge, which could help Obama get a candidate past Senate Republicans who have vowed to not even hold hearings on an Obama Supreme Court nominee. Garland almost filled an empty seat on the high court once before during Obama's tenure, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor was chosen instead.

Garland has also supervised investigations with the U.S. Department of Justice. He has been viewed as pro-law enforcement at a time when the relationships between law enforcement and the communities they police have been eroded, rarely voting in favor of criminal defendants in their appeals, SCOTUSblog.com reported. However, this could help him win over Senate Republicans' support.

An issue the first time his name came up in relation to the Supreme Court was his acceptance of former President George W. Bush’s policy of indefinite detentions at the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.

If he made it past the nomination process, the Indian-born Srinivasan would be the first Asian-American on the Supreme Court. Appointed to an appeals court in 2013, he easily made it past the Senate with a 97-0 vote.

What could endear him to Republicans is the fact that he clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was appointed by former Republican President Ronald Regan. He has also worked for the private industry as well, representing former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling as well as Exxon over human rights abuses, Vox reported.