The NYU Law Review Online Department is pleased to announce the launch of the Merrick Garland Project, which seeks to present Chief Judge Garland’s judicial record in a unique and accessible way—by curating a selection of Judge Garland’s opinions authored while on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, condensing them, and organizing them by subject matter. We launched on March 21, 2016 with opinions in four principal categories: constitutional law, civil rights, criminal law, and administrative law. As this is a working project, more opinions and categories will be released in the coming days and weeks as the Project develops.
We aim not to undertake a comprehensive review of Judge Garland’s entire jurisprudence, but rather to take a closer look at select opinions that we believe are representative of his judicial philosophy. With an eye toward opinions that are highly cited, clarify a previously unsettled area of the law, or are written for a divided court, we wish to make Judge Garland’s record more accessible, exploring not just his votes and holdings, but his legal reasoning. In doing so, we hope the Project will be a valuable resource to attorneys, journalists, students, and anyone else with an interest in Judge Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court and its potential implications.