He jumped at it.
“I don’t know whether he thought it would be good if he were ever going to become attorney general or a judge,” said Earl Steinberg, a lifelong friend who has known Judge Garland since kindergarten and roomed with him at Harvard. “But he viewed it as an experience he ought to get.”
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It was one of a series of carefully considered steps that positioned Judge Garland, now the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to stand in the Rose Garden on Wednesday beside President Obama, who nominated him for a job that friends say he has dreamed of for years: a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
On the bench, Judge Garland has a reputation as a moderate, admired by both Democrats and Republicans, who has come down on the government’s side in a number of cases. He has not objected to the death penalty — he said it was “settled law” in a 1995 confirmation hearing — and he deferred to the Bush administration on the rights of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He has been notably deferential to executive agencies and is seen as reluctant to second-guess experts.
But Judge Garland’s deference has limits. In 2004, he wrote an opinion that ruled for the Sierra Club in a case concerning the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of ozone control plans under the Clean Air Act. “We agree with Sierra Club’s principal contention that E.P.A. was not authorized to grant conditional approval to plans that did nothing more than promise to do tomorrow what the act requires today,” he wrote.
For Judge Garland, 63, who spoke with tears in his eyes of his roots as a grandson of Jewish immigrants, the nomination was also a moment of deep uncertainty. He had long been on the president’s short list for a Supreme Court nomination, and was passed over when Mr. Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor and then Elena Kagan. But now that his turn has finally come, Republicans are vowing to block his appointment.
“This was, as a practical matter, his very last opportunity,” said Jamie Gorelick, who has known Judge Garland since their days as Harvard undergraduates and worked closely with him in the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton.
A native of Illinois and father of two grown daughters, Judge Garland has the kind of impeccable credentials that will make it difficult for Republicans to object to his qualifications — one reason that Mr. Obama picked him.
“Well, I’ll put it this way: I don’t dislike him,” Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, told Chuck Todd of NBC. Mr. Inhofe voted to confirm Judge Garland in 1997, but vowed to block his nomination now.