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Merrick Garland Nominated as 5th Jew to U.S. Supreme Court

Submitted by Guest on Wed, 03/23/2016 - 19:40

Hawaii Political Info introduction: Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland would be the fifth or fourth Jew on the nine-member U.S. Supreme Court if approved by the U.S. Senate. The other Jewish Justices are Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and possibly Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor is thought to be of Jewish ancestry, but there appears to be no publicly available hard evidence. She was raised Catholic, according to news reports. The remaining Justices are Catholic.

Sotomayor is considered part of the Jewish (usually called "liberal") block in the Court, along with Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan. They voted together in upholding Obamacare and same-sex marriage, where the vote in both cases was a narrow 5-4 in favor.

The Jerusalem Post

New Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland credited his Jewish grandparents, who he said fled to the US from anti-Semitism in Russia, for putting him in position to be nominated.

“My family deserves much of the credit for the path that led me here. My grandparents left the Pale of Settlement at the border of western Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fleeing anti-Semitism and hoping to make a better life for their children in America,” he said, choking up Wednesday morning in the White House Rose Garden as he accepted President Barack Obama’s nomination.

Born to a Jewish mother and a Protestant father, Garland was raised as a Jew.

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