President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced that he picked Merrick Garland, chief justice for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to be his nominee to the Supreme Court, replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Speaking from the White House Rose Garden, Obama said, “I’ve selected a nominee who is recognized not only as one of America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, honesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence. I said I would take this process seriously and I did. I chose a serious man and exemplary judge.”
Merrick Garland, 63 was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in the suburb of Lincolnwood. His mother, Shirley (née Horwitz), was a director of volunteer services, and his father, Cyril Garland, headed Garland Advertising, a small business run out of the family’s home. Garland graduated from Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois, as the class valedictorian. He married his wife, Lynn, in 1987. Lynn’s grandfather, Samuel Irving Rosenman, was a justice of the New York Supreme Court and a special counsel to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. The Garlands have two daughters, Rebecca and Jessica.
Garland was a clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan and served in the Justice Department in several leadership roles, first as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division and later as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General.