Dismissing Republican objections, President Barack Obama has vowed to name an “indisputably” qualified nominee for the Supreme Court Bench in place of Justice Antonin Scalia who died last Saturday.
“I am going to present somebody who indisputably is qualified for the seat and any fair minded person, even somebody who disagreed with my politics, would say would serve with honour and integrity on the court,” he said at a news conference in California, adding he would come up with the nomination in “due time”.
Declining to say if he would opt to nominate someone moderate enough to make the Republicans change course and schedule a vote, Obama told a questioner: “You shouldn’t assume anything about the qualifications of the nominee other than they’re going to be well-qualified.”
Sri Srinivasan, the Indian-American judge who is projected by legal and media circles as Obama’s top choice, is also someone regarded as a moderate with bipartisan appeal as evidenced by the unanimous 97-0 Senate confirmation he secured in May 2013 for his current job as Judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Washington DC Circuit.
Amid Republican assertions that he ought not to be making an appointment of such far-reaching importance in his final year in office, Obama said: “I am amused when I hear people who claim to be strict interpreters of the Constitution suddenly reading into it a whole series of provisions that are not there.”
Your job doesn’t stop until you’re voted out or until your term expires,” he said, adding: “I intend to do my job between now and January 20th of 2017. I expect them (the Senators) to do their job as well.”