WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he will nominate appeals court judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, urging Republicans to approve a longtime jurist and former prosecutor known as “one of America’s sharpest legal minds.”

Maine’s two U.S. senators say the U.S. Senate should schedule confirmation hearings on the nomination.

Angus King, an Independent, said in a written statement Monday morning: “The president has fulfilled his constitutional obligation to nominate a candidate for the Supreme Court, and now it is the Senate’s constitutional obligation to give Mr. Garland due and proper consideration. I intend to carefully review Mr. Garland’s record and evaluate his character, intellect, and judicial temperament, and I hope all of my colleagues – regardless of their politics – will join me by doing the same.”

Susan Collins, a Republican, issued a news release Wednesday saying she expects to examine Garland’s “judicial record as well as other relevant materials.” She said she will consider his “intellect, integrity, qualifications, experience, temperament, and respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.”

She referred to Garland as a “capable and accomplished jurist” and said she looked forward to meeting with him.

“I have found in the past that these one-on-one exchanges are extremely valuable and allow me to assess, even in some ways better than a public hearing, what kind of judge the person would be and whether or not they are suited by way of qualifications and temperament for the position to which they have been nominated.”

Of the advise and consent process, Collins said: “I hope, now that we have an actual nominee, that the Senate Judiciary Committee will follow the regular order and hold a hearing on the nomination of Judge Garland.”

Garland, 63, is the chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a court whose influence over federal policy and national security matters has made it a proving ground for potential Supreme Court justices.

He would replace Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who died last month, leaving behind a bitter election-year fight over the future of the court.

Obama announced his choice at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, with Democratic Senate leaders and allies looking on.

He held up Merrick as a diligent public servant, highlighting his work leading the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing. He quoted past praise for Garland from Chief Justice John Roberts and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. And he said Garland’s talent for bringing together “odd couples” made him a consensus candidate best poised to become an immediate force on the nation’s highest court.

Garland is known for his “decency, modesty, integrity, evenhandedness and excellence,” he said.

Obama noted Garland was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in 1997 with backing from a majority in both parties, including seven current Republicans senators.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democratic leader, called Garland’s selection, “a bipartisan choice.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, who spoke to Obama on Wednesday morning, said in brief remarks on the Senate floor that Republicans must act on the president’s choice. “He’s doing his job this morning, they should do theirs,” he said.

If confirmed, Garland would be expected to align with the more liberal members, but he is not viewed as down-the-line liberal. Particularly on criminal defense and national security cases, he’s earned a reputation as centrist, and one of the few Democratic-appointed judges Republicans might have fast-tracked to confirmation — under other circumstances.

But in the current climate, Garland remains a tough sell. Republicans control the Senate, which must confirm any nominee, and GOP leaders want to leave the choice to the next president, denying Obama a chance to alter the ideological balance of the court before he leaves office next January. Republicans contend that a confirmation fight in an election year would be too politicized.

Ahead of Obama’s announcement, the Republican Party set up a task force that will orchestrate attack ads, petitions and media outreach. The aim is to bolster Senate Republicans’ strategy of denying consideration of Obama’s nominee. The party’s chairman, Reince Priebus, described it as the GOP’s most comprehensive judicial response effort ever.

On the other side, Obama allies have been drafted to run a Democratic effort that will involve liberal groups that hope an Obama nominee could pull the high court’s ideological balance to the left. The effort would target states where activists believe Republicans will feel political heat for opposing hearings once Obama announced his nominee.

For Obama, Garland represents a significant departure from his past two Supreme Court choices. In nominating Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the president eagerly seized the chance to broaden the court’s diversity and rebalance the overwhelming male institution. Sotomayor was the first Hispanic confirmed to the court, Kagan only the fourth woman.

Garland — a white, male jurist with an Ivy League pedigree and career spent largely in the upper echelon of the Washington’s legal elite — breaks no barriers. At 63 years old, he would be the oldest Supreme Court nominee since Lewis Powell, who was 64 when he was confirmed in late 1971.

Presidents tend to appoint young judges with the hope they will shape the court’s direction for as long as possible.

Those factors had, until now, made Garland something of a perpetual bridesmaid, repeatedly on Obama’s Supreme Court lists, but never chosen.

But Garland found his moment at a time when Democrats are seeking to apply maximum pressure on Republicans. A key part of their strategy is casting Republicans as knee-jerk obstructionists ready to shoot down a nominee that many in their own ranks once considered a consensus candidate. In 2010, Sen. Hatch called Garland “terrific” and said he could be confirmed “virtually unanimously.”

The White House planned to highlight Hatch’s past support, as well as other glowing comments about Garland from conservative groups.

A native of Chicago and graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Garland clerked for two appointees of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower — the liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. and Judge Henry J. Friendly, for whom Chief Justice John Roberts also clerked.

In 1988, he gave up a plush partner’s office in a powerhouse law firms to cut his teeth in criminal cases. As an assistant U.S. attorney, he joined the team prosecuting a Reagan White House aide charged with illegal lobbying and did early work on the drug case against then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry. He held a top-ranking post in the Justice Department when he was dispatched to Oklahoma City the day after bombing at the federal courthouse to supervise the investigation. The case made his career and his reputation. He oversaw the convictions of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and went on to supervise the investigation into Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

President Bill Clinton first nominated him to the D.C. Circuit in 1995.

His prolonged confirmation process may prove to have prepared him for the one ahead. Garland waited 2½ years to win confirmation to the appeals court. Then, as now, one of the men blocking the path was Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, who argued he had no quarrel with Garland’s credentials, but a beef with the notion of a Democratic president trying to fill a court he argued had too many seats.

Grassley ultimately relented, although he was not one of the 32 Republicans who voted in favor of Garland’s confirmation. Nor was Sen. Mitch McConnell, the other major hurdle for Garland now. The Republicans who voted in favor of confirmation are Sen. Dan Coats, Sen. Thad Cochran, Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sen. Jim Inhofe, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Pat Roberts.

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