The early favorite to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who died Saturday at the age 79 is 48 year old, Sri Srinivasan. President Barack Obama appointed him to serve as a Judge on the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals, which is the second most powerful court in the U.S
What makes Srinivasan is perhaps the most attractive potential Supreme Court nominee for Obama if the goal is to put pressure Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who has said that he will block anyone that the president nominates.
Just three years ago when President Obama nominated Srinivasan, he was confirmed in May 2013 by a unanimous, 97-0 vote in the Senate making it hard for McConnell to say that at the very least considering him as a replacement for Scalia was anything less than political.
Srinivasan is considered by those who follow possible Supreme Court nominee’s as smart, a constitutional scholar and a moderate in his rulings. He clerked for Republican-appointed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who often sided with the more liberal members of the court.
He was born in India as Padmanabhan Srikanth Srinivasan, grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, and went to Stanford, where he earned his undergraduate and law degrees, in addition to an MBA.
The president has called him ‘a trailblazer who personifies the best of America’.
If he is nominated and sworn in, Srinivasan, known as ‘Sri’, will break new ground as the country’s first Indian-American justice.
The litigator, who represented the country in the Windsor v. United States case, argued that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional given its limitations on same-sex couples.
He notably presented the case without notes, according to USA Today.
Mother Jones reported that the president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center Doug Kendall, called Srinivasan’s record ‘not progressive-forward; it is as non-ideological as you can find’.
Here is the current list of Supreme Court Justices:
Anthony M. Kennedy (79 years old) -Conservative, appointed by Ronald Reagan, serving since 1988
Clarence Thomas (67 years old) – Conservative, appointed by George H. W. Bush, serving since 1991
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (82 years old) – Liberal, appointed by Bill Clinton, serving since 1993
Stephen Breyer (77 years old) – Centrist, appointed by Bill Clinton, serving since 1994
John G. Roberts (61 years old) – Conservative, appointed by George W. Bush, serving since 2005
Samuel Alito, Jr. (65 years old) – Conservative, appointed by George W. Bush, serving since 2006
Sonia Sotomayor (61 years old) – Liberal, appointed by Barack Obama, serving since 2009
Elena Kagan (55 years old) – Liberal, appointed by Barack Obama, serving since 2010
