President Barack Obama is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a federal appellate judge in Iowa, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, weighing a selection that could pose an awkward dilemma for Charles E. Grassley, her home-state senator who has pledged to block the president from filling the vacancy.
The FBI has been conducting background interviews on Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Obama’s search to fill the opening created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The president is expected to make his selection in the next couple of weeks, a decision that could reshape the court for decades but faces heated opposition from Republicans in Congress.
Grassley is at the center of that fight as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a post in which he alone can decide whether to hold confirmation hearings on a nominee. Like the panel’s other Republicans, he has vowed not to take any action until after the November election, arguing that the choice should be left to the next president.
Senator praised judge in 2013
In a Senate floor speech in 2013, Grassley praised Kelly, a longtime public defender, just before she won unanimous confirmation to her current position on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The senator read from a handwritten recommendation letter he had received from a retired judge, David R. Hansen, a Republican appointee he counted as an old friend. Hansen called Kelly a “forthright woman of high integrity and honest character” and a person of “exceptionally keen intellect.”
“I congratulate Kelly on her accomplishments and wish her well in her duties,” Grassley said at the time. “I am pleased to support her confirmation and urge my colleagues to join me.”
A jurist from Grassley's home state
Democrats have privately said that selecting Kelly might force Grassley to change his stance and hold hearings, out of a sense of obligation to a respected jurist from his home state and concern about tarnishing his reputation in Iowa months before he faces re-election. The six-term senator is facing pressure from voters to consider any nominee on the merits, but he said in an interview Wednesday that he would not change his position even for a fellow Iowan.
Nevertheless, Obama has publicly predicted that Republicans, faced with a well-qualified candidate and a constitutional mandate to provide advice and consent, will ultimately relent and allow hearings.
The White House declined to comment on whether the president was considering Kelly or any other candidate. Kelly said through a judicial assistant at her Cedar Rapids chambers that she was not granting interviews on the matter.
Judge nearly killed in unsolved attack
Five years into her tenure in the federal public defender’s office for the Northern District of Iowa, Kelly was nearly killed in an attack while jogging in Cedar Rapids. The crime was never solved, and Kelly spent months recovering and endured multiple surgeries.
“It’s easy to lose compassion,” she said at the time, “but the problem is bigger than who committed the crime.”
'About being used as a political pawn'
Grassley, in the interview Wednesday, said he hoped Kelly would be on a short list of potential Supreme Court nominees for the next Democratic president.
“In this particular instance,” Grassley said about the election-year vacancy, “it has got to be the process, and the person doesn’t matter, see.”
He also broke with the Senate majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has ruled out meeting with the president’s nominee. Grassley said that he had not yet decided whether he would do so, and that Kelly, as an Iowan, would be welcome in his office any time.
“You know, one of the questions I will ask them,” he said of the eventual nominee, will be “what they feel about being used as a political pawn.”
“If I talk to them in my office, I’d do that,” he said.
White House reaching out to Senators
As of Wednesday, the president and his team had reached out to all 100 senators about filling the vacancy, White House officials said.
If Obama makes his selection in the next couple of weeks, the timetable would be consistent with the four to five weeks he spent deliberating before filling his previous two Supreme Court vacancies, in which he chose Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Scalia died almost three weeks ago.
The president is likely to formally vet more than one candidate for the post — a process that entails an extensive background check, including FBI interviews — and conduct in-person interviews in the Oval Office.
Praise for other candidates
Like Kelly, many of the judges believed to be under consideration to succeed Scalia have won praise from the same Republican senators who are now eager to prevent Obama from tilting the ideological balance of the court. Many of the judges were confirmed in the Senate by wide margins.
Judge Sri Srinivasan, who was confirmed in May 2013 by a vote of 97-0 as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, received warm commendations from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, a former Judiciary Committee chairman.
“I am really impressed with you,” Hatch told Srinivasan at his confirmation hearing. “I think you are terrific.”
Hatch, who remains a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, had similar praise for Judge Merrick B. Garland, another potential Supreme Court pick, who was confirmed in 1997 for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
“To my knowledge, no one, absolutely no one, disputes the following: Merrick B. Garland is highly qualified to sit on the D.C. Circuit,” Hatch said on the Senate floor. “His intelligence and his scholarship cannot be questioned.”
Another judge said to be under consideration by Obama, Jacqueline Nguyen of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was confirmed in May 2012 by a vote of 91-3.
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