This is one hell of happy
news for us; it’s an expression of integration, that Indians are fully
participating and contributing members of the society at large. Despite the
flaws in our democracies (American and Indian), we are the most inclusive
societies.
The New
Yorker reports this
great news: "The next Supreme Court
confirmation hearing begins on Wednesday afternoon, April 10th. Technically, Sri
Srinivasan is just a candidate for the United States Court of Appeals for the
D.C. Circuit, but few are misled. The stakes in this nomination are
clear: if Srinivasan passes this test and wins confirmation, he’ll be on the
Supreme Court before President Obama’s term ends."
We have
a lot more work to do in India and the United States to truly make it a society,
where every individual is honored for his or her contributions to the nation
building without regards to his or her religion, race, ethnicity, sexual
orientation and nationality.
We do have bigots in both nations and we
need to continue to have a dialogue with them to treat every American (USA) or
Indian (India) as an individual to be treated with full dignity without
prejudice.
When a Sikh,
Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Dalit, Muslim and Hindu achieves success, and if each
one of us can celebrate that success by draining sewerage out of our hearts that
he is a Christian, Muslim or Sikh... then we have achieved Moksha, Mukti and
freedom, and congratulations to all those who have achieved that, and those who
have not, please do not miss out that opportunity in your life
time.
...........
The Supreme Court Nominee-in-Waiting
The next Supreme Court confirmation
hearing begins on Wednesday afternoon, April 10th. Technically, Sri Srinivasan
is just a candidate for the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit,
but few are misled. The stakes in this nomination are clear: if Srinivasan
passes this test and wins confirmation, he’ll be on the Supreme Court before
President Obama’s term ends.
The next Supreme Court confirmation hearing begins on
Wednesday afternoon, April 10th. Technically, Sri Srinivasan is just a candidate
for the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but few are misled.
The stakes in this nomination are clear: if Srinivasan passes this test and wins
confirmation, he’ll be on the Supreme Court before President Obama’s term
ends.
The D.C. Circuit has long operated as a Supreme Court
farm team (John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg played their AAA ball there), and Republicans have worked with zeal,
and amazing success, to keep Obama from placing a single judge on that court.
Just last month, Caitlin Halligan, an eminently qualified New York prosecutor
whose confirmation had been shamefully blocked by Senate Republicans for more
than two years, withdrew
her candidacy. Srinivasan is next up for
consideration.
Srinivasan, who is forty-six years old, is currently
the Obama Administration’s principal deputy solicitor general. He’s had twenty
or so arguments in the Supreme Court, including part of the Administration’s
attack on the Defense of Marriage Act last month. He’s been a corporate
litigator at O’Melveny & Myers; a junior lawyer in the Office of the
Solicitor General; and a law clerk to J. Harvie Wilkinson, who is a moderate
conservative on the Fourth Circuit, and then to Sandra Day O’Connor. He earned
degrees from Stanford in college, law school, and even business school; he grew
up in Lawrence, Kansas, where his parents taught at the state
university.
When Srinivasan’s name first surfaced as a possible
nominee to the federal bench, early in Obama’s first term, he drew opposition
from labor groups, who appeared to take issue with some of his stands as a
private lawyer and in George W. Bush’s Justice Department. (He was a career
lawyer, not a political appointee, under Bush.) Lately, those objections to
Srinivasan have become muted or disappeared altogether. In part, this may be
because those kinds of challenges to a nominee are inherently unfair; lawyers,
after all, represent clients.
More importantly, perhaps, liberal groups have become
so frustrated with President Obama’s dithering on judicial nominations that they
are happy to see him put forward almost any name. There are four
vacancies on the D.C. Circuit, and Obama has just one current nominee for that
court. There are, in total, eighty-seven
vacancies on the federal courts, and right now the President has just
twenty-five nominees to fill those seats. In light of the tactics of obstruction
and delay that Republicans have used against his nominees, Obama’s failure to
fill the pipeline will cripple his efforts to leave a broad judicial
legacy.
In fairness, Obama’s team has at least mustered a
comprehensive effort on Srinivasan’s behalf. Most notably, twelve former
Solicitors General, including such Republican notables as Kenneth Starr and Paul
Clement, have signed
a letter endorsing Srinivasan’s confirmation. He has the sort of impeccable
credentials that are much beloved by the Supreme Court bar, though Srinivasan’s
own views on the Constitution are more difficult to discern. He has written many
briefs but few articles that reveal his own thinking. He is a protégé of Walter
Dellinger, the acting Solicitor General in the Clinton Administration and a
(mostly) beloved (mostly) liberal figure in the world of the Supreme Court. The
safe assumption seems to be that Srinivasan would be the same kind of moderate
liberal as Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan (and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen
Breyer, for that matter).
The real issue with a potential Srinivasan nomination
would be political. Ginsburg is the justicemost
likely to retire in the next two years. Would Obama select a woman to take
her place? Tom Goldstein, the proprietor of the indispensable SCOTUSblog, thinks the
President will feel compelled to keep three women on the court. He points to
Kamala Harris, the attorney general of California, as the most likely choice.
(It’s now well known that the President already finds Harris an, er, attractiveoffice
holder.) Another possibility is Jacqueline Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who
now serves
on the Ninth Circuit. But there hasn’t been an active politician like Harris
named to the Court since Earl Warren in 1953, and Nguyen is little-known outside
California. (If the President does go for a politician, I think the more likely
possibility is Amy Klobuchar, the senior Senator from Minnesota.) I am less sure
than Goldstein that Obama will nominate a woman to replace Ginsburg. There is no
female candidate as obvious as Sotomayor was in 2009, and Srinivasan would, as
the first Indian-American on the court, be a history-making
choice.
Plus, if Srinivasan runs the confirmation gauntlet now,
it will be difficult for Republicans to argue that he’s unconfirmable just
months later. His credentials would surely appeal to Obama, who has a fondness
for technocrats, and his thin paper trail would make him difficult to attack.
Which is why it looks very much like this hearing isn’t just a test for
Srinivasan—it’s a dress rehearsal.
Illustration, of Sri Srinivasan speaking about the
Defense of Marriage Act at the Supreme Court, by Art
Lien/Reuters.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/04/sri-srinivasan-dc-circuit-nominee-supreme-court.html?printable=true¤tPage=all#ixzz2Q02DAEcl
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