Will Merrick Garland continue to hear appeals while nomination is pending?
Judges who are nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court have a decision to make: Should they continue to hear cases?
There are several options, Politico reports. Judges could decline new cases, could stop all pending work, could continue with their usual workload, or could even quit the bench.
Supreme Court nominees prepare for weeks before Senate hearings, which makes it difficult to keep up with their daily workload. But Judge Merrick Garland, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, may not even have a confirmation hearing.
New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert, told Politico that Garland’s situation is unique. “What’s unusual here, of course, is that the time between naming a nominee and confirmation can be rather long and I would expect that the nominee, unlike in the usual case, will keep on deciding appeals, including new ones,” Gillers said.
Garland has already provided some hints of how he will handle his day job, the article notes. He has been removed from cases being argued this week and next week, but is still on cases scheduled for argument in mid-April.
