Bernie Sanders wants to replace Obama's SCOTUS nominee

Bernie Sanders would have made a different decision.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 18 March 2016

As a senator, Bernie Sanders is ready to help put President Obama's nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. As a presidential candidate, however, he thinks he could do better than Merrick Garland.

"I'm 100 percent prepared to support Judge Garland," Sanders said in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday. "I think he's clearly very knowledgeable and can serve ably on the Supreme Court, but between you and me, I think there are some more progressive judges out there."

Sanders didn't hesitate to say that were he elected in November and the SCOTUS seat remained unfilled, he would ask Obama to withdraw Garland's nomination. The candidate explained that his personal litmus test for a SCOTUS nominee is "that justice must be loud and clear in telling us that he or she will vote to overturn this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision," which is a test Merrick may well fail, as evidenced by his decision in a 2010 Court of Appeals ruling which specifically built on the Citizens United case.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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