Merrick Garland: Biography

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Merrick Garland.Image via Wikimedia Commons

Who Is Merrick Garland?

Merrick Brian Garland (born November 13, 1952) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as the 86th United States attorney general from 2021 to 2025. He previously served as a circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1997 to 2021. In 2016, the U.S. Senate refused to hold a confirmation hearing after President Barack Obama nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A native of the Chicago area, Garland attended Harvard University and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk to Judge Henry Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr., and then practiced corporate litigation at Arnold & Porter, after which he worked as a federal prosecutor in the United States Department of Justice, where he supervised the investigation and prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers. President Bill Clinton appointed Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1997, and he served as its chief judge from 2013 to 2020.

President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Garland to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in March 2016 to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. However, the Republican Senate majority refused to hold a hearing or vote on his nomination. The unprecedented refusal of a Senate majority to consider a Supreme Court nomination was highly controversial. Garland's nomination lasted 293 days (the longest to date), and it expired on January 3, 2017, at the end of the 114th Congress. Eventually, subsequent President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated Neil Gorsuch to the vacant seat, and the Republican Senate majority confirmed him.

President Joe Biden nominated Garland as U.S. attorney general in January 2021. He was confirmed by the Senate in a 70–30 vote, and took office in March of that same year. During his tenure, Garland was criticized for the pace of the prosecution of President Donald Trump. Some observers, including Biden, assigned Garland some responsibility for the fact that none of the indictments obtained by special counsel Jack Smith went to trial before the November 2024 election in which Trump prevailed and won re-election to a second non-consecutive term leading to all charges against him being dismissed.

Early life and education

Early Life: Where Is Merrick Garland From?

Garland was born on November 13, 1952, in Chicago. His mother Shirley (née Horwitz; 1925–2016) was a director of volunteer services at Chicago's Council for Jewish Elderly (now called CJE SeniorLife). His father, Cyril Garland (1915–2000), headed Garland Advertising, a small business run out of the family home. Garland was raised in Conservative Judaism; the family name had been changed from Garfinkel several generations earlier. His grandparents left the Pale of Settlement in the western Russian Empire in the early 20th century, fleeing antisemitic pogroms in what is now Ukraine and Poland. Two of his grandmother's siblings were later murdered in the Holocaust. He is a second cousin of Republican six-term Iowa Governor and former US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad.

Garland grew up in the north Chicago border suburb of Lincolnwood. He attended Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois, where he was president of the student council, acted in theatrical productions, and was a member of the debate team. He graduated in 1970 as the class valedictorian. Garland was also a Presidential Scholar and National Merit Scholar. He then studied social studies at Harvard University. He initially wanted to become a physician, but soon decided to become a lawyer instead. He allied himself with his future boss, Jamie Gorelick, when he was elected the only freshman member of a campus-wide committee on which Gorelick also served. During his college summers Garland volunteered as a speechwriter to Congressman Abner J. Mikva. After President Jimmy Carter appointed Mikva to the D.C. Circuit, Mikva would rely on Garland when hiring law clerks. At Harvard, Garland wrote news articles and theater reviews for the Harvard Crimson, and was a resident of Quincy House. Garland wrote his 235-page honors thesis on industrial mergers in Britain in the 1960s. Garland graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts in social studies, summa cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Garland then attended Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review. Garland ran for the presidency of the Law Review but lost to Susan Estrich, so he served as an articles editor instead. As an articles editor, Garland assigned himself to edit a submission by U.S. Supreme Court justice William Brennan on the topic of the role of state constitutions in safeguarding individual rights. This correspondence with Brennan later contributed to his winning a clerkship with the justice. Garland graduated from Harvard Law School in 1977 with a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude.

Early career

After graduating from law school, Garland spent two years as a judicial law clerk, first for Judge Henry Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York City) from 1977 to 1978 and then for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1978 to 1979. After his clerkships, Garland spent two years as a special assistant to U.S. attorney general Benjamin Civiletti.

Merrick Garland's Career and Major Works

After the Carter administration ended in 1981, Garland entered private practice at the law firm Arnold & Porter. Garland practiced mostly corporate litigation, and was made a partner in 1985. In Motor Vehicles Manufacturers Ass'n v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. (1983) Garland acted as counsel to an insurance company suing to reinstate an unpopular automatic seat belt mandate.

After winning the case in both the District of Columbia Circuit Court and the Supreme Court, Garland wrote an 87-page Harvard Law Review article describing the way courts use a heightened "hard look" standard of review and scope of review when an agency chooses deregulation, with increasing focus on the fidelity of the agencies' actions to congressional intent.

In 1985–86, while at Arnold & Porter, Garland was a lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he taught antitrust law. He also published an article in the Yale Law Journal urging a broader application of antitrust immunity to state and local governments.

Desiring to return to public service and do more trial work, in 1989 Garland became an assistant United States attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. As a line prosecutor, Garland represented the government in criminal cases ranging from drug trafficking to complex public corruption matters. Garland was one of the three principal prosecutors who handled the investigation into Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry's possession of cocaine.

Garland then briefly returned to Arnold & Porter, working there from 1992 to 1993. In 1993, Garland joined the new Clinton administration as deputy assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice. The following year, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick – a key mentor of Garland's – asked Garland to be her principal associate deputy attorney general.

Merrick Garland's Personal Life and Relationships

In that role, Garland's responsibilities included the supervision of high-profile domestic-terrorism cases, including the Oklahoma City bombing, Ted Kaczynski (also known as the "Unabomber"), and the Atlanta Olympics bombings.

Garland insisted on being sent to Oklahoma City in the aftermath of the attack, in order to examine the crime scene and oversee the investigation in preparation for the prosecution. He represented the government at the preliminary hearings of the two main defendants, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Garland offered to lead the trial team, but could not because he was needed at the Justice Department headquarters. Instead, he helped pick the team and supervised it from Washington, D.C., where he was involved in major decisions, including the choice to seek the death penalty for McVeigh and Nichols. Garland won praise for his work on the case from the Republican governor of Oklahoma, Frank Keating.

Garland served as co-chair of the administrative law section of the District of Columbia Bar from 1991 to 1994. He is also a member of the American Law Institute.

In 2003, Garland was elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers, completing the unexpired term of Deval Patrick, who had stepped down from the board. Garland served as president of the overseers for 2009–10.

Federal judicial service (1997–2021)

Where Is Merrick Garland Now? Recent Years

On September 6, 1995, President Bill Clinton nominated Garland to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia seat vacated by his longtime mentor Abner J. Mikva. Justice Brennan, for whom Garland had clerked, recommended Garland for the position in a letter to Clinton. The American Bar Association (ABA) Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary unanimously gave Garland a "well-qualified" committee rating, its highest.

On December 1, 1995, Garland received a hearing regarding the nomination before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In Senate confirmation hearings Garland said that the Supreme Court justices whom he most admired were Justice Brennan, for whom he clerked, and Chief Justice John Marshall. Garland also expressed admiration for the writing style of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. However, Senate Republicans did not schedule a vote on Garland's confirmation, not because of concerns over Garland's qualifications, but because of a dispute over whether to fill the seat.

After winning the November 1996 presidential election, Clinton renominated Garland on January 7, 1997. He was confirmed on March 19, 1997, by a 76–23 vote. The majority of Republican senators voted to confirm Garland, including senators John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Susan Collins, and Jim Inhofe. Senators Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, and Jeff Sessions were among those who voted against Garland. All of the 23 "no" votes came from Republicans, and all were said to be based "on whether there was even a need for an eleventh seat" on the D.C. Circuit. He received his judicial commission on March 20, 1997.

Service as chief judge of the D.C. Circuit

Garland became chief judge of the D.C. Circuit on February 12, 2013. In May 2013 he announced that the D.C. Circuit had unanimously decided to provide the public with same-day audio recordings of oral arguments in the court. During his term, he was an active member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and was involved in the formulation of new rules to protect federal judicial branch employees from workplace harassment, which were adopted in the wake of multiple sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Alex Kozinski. Garland's seven-year term as chief judge ended on February 11, 2020, with Judge Sri Srinivasan succeeding him. Garland continued to serve as an active member of the court until his retirement.

Merrick Garland's Legacy and Impact

Notable cases

Garland is considered a judicial moderate and a centrist. Garland has been described by Nina Totenberg and Carrie Johnson of NPR as "a moderate liberal, with a definite pro-prosecution bent in criminal cases". Tom Goldstein, the publisher of SCOTUSblog, wrote in 2010 that "Judge Garland's record demonstrates that he is essentially the model, neutral judge. His opinions avoid unnecessary, sweeping pronouncements." Garland has a reputation for collegiality and his opinions rarely draw a dissent. As of 2016, Garland had written just fifteen dissents in his two decades on the court, fewer than his colleague Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote some 17 dissents over the previous decade.

Administrative and environmental law

Garland has tended to favor deference to regulatory agencies. For example, in In re Aiken County (2013), Garland dissented when the court issued mandamus ordering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to process the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository license. In Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration (2013), Garland joined a divided court upholding the DEA's classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug. However, according to Goldstein, in a number of split decisions on environmental law Garland "favored contested EPA regulations and actions when challenged by industry, and in other cases he has accepted challenges brought by environmental groups." In Rancho Viejo, LLC v. Norton (2003), Garland found the arroyo toad was protected by the federal Endangered Species Act. Circuit Judge John Roberts dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc, writing that Congress's interstate commerce power cannot reach "a hapless toad that, for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California."

Criminal law and whistleblower protection

While on the bench, Garland has shown a tendency to be deferential to the government in criminal cases, siding with prosecutors in ten of the fourteen criminal cases in which he disagreed with a colleague. For example, in United States v. Watson (1999), Garland dissented when the court concluded a prosecutor's closing argument was unduly prejudicial, objecting that a conviction should be reversed for only "the most egregious of these kind of errors." In 2007, Garland dissented when the en banc D.C. Circuit reversed the conviction of a Washington, D.C. police officer who had accepted bribes in an FBI sting operation.

Garland has taken a broad view of whistleblower protection laws, such as the False Claims Act (FCA), which creates a private cause of action against those defrauding the federal government. For example, in United States ex rel. Yesudian v. Howard University (1998), Garland wrote for the court in holding that a plaintiff alleging he had...

Merrick Garland's career continues to be documented by reputable media; the facts above are drawn from Wikipedia's biography and public records.

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