Obama to nominate Tamil Nadu man to US Supreme Court?

CNN on Sunday said there is always a short-list of potential justices that court experts and watchers have in their heads.  “Any list begins with Sri Srinivasan, 48, a member of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit – a traditional launching pad for Supreme Court nominees,” it added. ‘Sri’ as Srikanth is known, reportedly has huge support among both the Republican and Democrats. Scalia was a conservative icon, and his replacement has to be acceptable to many if not all Republicans in Congress, media speculated. The moderate DC Circuit Court of Appeals judge, has already been labeled Obama’s “Supreme Court nominee in waiting,” by Jeffrey Toobin, legal analyst for CNN and The New Yorker. 

Old Obama hand At a time of bitter political divide when it would be tough for Obama to get through his nomination, Congressional experts pointed that Srinivasan’s nomination as a federal judge was confirmed by the Senate in 2013 with a record 97-0 votes including the two Republican presidential aspirants, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.  

Sri, whom Obama had first nominated to the post in 2012, was a high school basketball star in Kansas before attending Stanford University, which he graduated from in 1989. His father hails from Mela Thiruvenkatanathapuram in Tirunelveli. His mother is from Chennai. He was Obama’s principal deputy solicitor general, most notably working on the successful fight against the Defence of Marriage Act, but also has experience on the other side of the aisle, serving as an assistant to the solicitor general during the George W Bush administration and as a clerk to retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Trailblazer Sri was sworn in as judge of the second most powerful court of the US in 2013, making him the first Asian-American and Indian-American to be on the bench of the US Courts of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit. O’Connor, who had administered the oath of office, called Srinivasan “fair, faultless and fabulous”. 

However, there is a chance that it will not be smooth sailing for ‘Sri’. The vacancy on the court, which is now evenly split 4-4 between its conservative and liberal wings, had Republicans calling on President Barack Obama to refrain from choosing a successor to the right-leaning Scalia while Democrats urged Obama to do as the US Constitution requires and put forward a candidate to face confirmation in an albeit hostile Senate. The ball is now in President Obama’s court.