POLITICS

White House Is Said to Be Vetting Iowa Judge for Supreme Court Seat

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Jane L. Kelly during her 2013 confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Diego M. Radzinschi/The National Law Journal 
WASHINGTON — President Obama is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a federal appellate judge in Iowa, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, weighing a selection that could pose an awkward dilemma for her home-state senator Charles E. Grassley, who has pledged to block the president from filling the vacancy.
The F.B.I. has been conducting background interviews on Judge Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Mr. Obama’s search to fill the opening created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The president is expected to make his selection in the next couple of weeks, a decision that could reshape the court for decades but faces heated opposition from Republicans in Congress.
Mr. Grassley is at the center of that fight as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a post in which he alone can decide whether to hold confirmation hearings on a nominee. Like the panel’s other Republicans, he has vowed not to take any action until after the November election, arguing that the choice should be left to the next president.

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Supreme Court Nominees Considered in Election Years Are Usually Confirmed 

Since 1900, the Senate has voted on eight Supreme Court nominees during an election year. Six were confirmed. 
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In a Senate floor speech in 2013, Mr. Grassley effusively praised Judge Kelly, a longtime public defender, just before she won unanimous confirmation to her current position on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
The senator read from a handwritten recommendation letter he had received from a retired judge, David R. Hansen, a Republican appointee he counted as an old friend. Mr. Hansen called Judge Kelly a “forthright woman of high integrity and honest character” and a person of “exceptionally keen intellect.”
“I congratulate Ms. Kelly on her accomplishments and wish her well in her duties,” Mr. Grassley said at the time. “I am pleased to support her confirmation and urge my colleagues to join me.”
Democrats have privately said that selecting Judge Kelly might force Mr. Grassley to change his stance and hold hearings, out of a sense of obligation to a respected jurist from his home state and concern about tarnishing his reputation in Iowa months before he faces re-election. The six-term senator is facing pressure from voters to consider any nominee on the merits, but he said in an interview Wednesday that he would not change his position even for a fellow Iowan.
Nevertheless, Mr. Obama has publicly predicted that Republicans, faced with a well-qualified candidate and a constitutional mandate to provide advice and consent, will ultimately relent and allow hearings.
The White House declined to comment on whether the president was considering Judge Kelly or any other candidate. Judge Kelly said through a judicial assistant at her Cedar Rapids chambers that she was not granting interviews on the matter.
Five years into her tenure in the federal public defender’s office for the Northern District of Iowa, Judge Kelly was nearly killed in an attack while jogging in Cedar Rapids. The crime was never solved, and Judge Kelly spent months recovering and endured multiple surgeries.
“It’s easy to lose compassion,” she said at the time, according to The Des Moines Register, “but the problem is bigger than who committed the crime.”
Mr. Grassley, in the interview on Wednesday, said he hoped Judge Kelly would be on a short list of potential Supreme Court nominees for the next Democratic president. “In this particular instance,” Mr. Grassley said about the election-year vacancy, “it has got to be the process, and the person doesn’t matter, see.”

Interactive Graphic: Supreme Court Precedents That May Be at Risk 

He also broke with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has flatly ruled out meeting with the president’s nominee. Mr. Grassley said that he had not yet decided whether he would do so, and that Judge Kelly, as an Iowan, would be welcome in his office any time.
“You know, one of the questions I will ask them,” he said of the eventual nominee, will be “what they feel about being used as a political pawn.”
“If I talk to them in my office, I’d do that,” he said.
If Mr. Obama makes his selection in the next couple of weeks, the timetable would be consistent with the four to five weeks he spent deliberating before filling his previous two Supreme Court vacancies, in which he chose Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Justice Scalia died almost three weeks ago.
The president is likely to formally vet more than one candidate for the post — a process that entails an extensive background check, including F.B.I. interviews — and conduct in-person interviews in the Oval Office.
Like Judge Kelly, many of the judges believed to be under consideration to succeed Justice Scalia have won praise from the same Republican senators who are now eager to prevent Mr. Obama from tilting the ideological balance of the court. Many of the judges were confirmed in the Senate by wide margins.
Judge Sri Srinivasan, who was confirmed in May 2013 by a vote of 97 to 0 as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, received warm commendations from Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and a former Judiciary Committee chairman.
“I am really impressed with you,” Mr. Hatch told Judge Srinivasan at his confirmation hearing. “I think you are terrific.”
Mr. Hatch, who remains a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, had similarly effusive praise for Judge Merrick B. Garland, another potential Supreme Court pick, who was confirmed in 1997 for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
“To my knowledge, no one, absolutely no one, disputes the following: Merrick B. Garland is highly qualified to sit on the D.C. Circuit,” Mr. Hatch said on the Senate floor. “His intelligence and his scholarship cannot be questioned.”