The historical record supports that position: 14 presidents have appointed 21 justices during presidential election years. A half-dozen presidents, classic lame ducks, filled Supreme Court seats even though their successors had been elected.

These six lame duck presidents appointed Supreme Court justices – before their successors took office

AD

AD

President Benjamin Harrison had been defeated in his 1892 reelection bid by former president Grover Cleveland, for example, when Associate Justice Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar died in office in January 1893. At that time, and until 1937 (and the 20th amendment), presidents were inaugurated in March, not January. While running for reelection, Harrison had appointed his third justice the previous July; he made a fourth nomination to the high court, despite his dwindling White House tenure. But Republican Harrison bowed to partisanrealities by nominating his Democratic friend, Howell Jackson.

The Senate was soon to change hands from Republican to Democratic control, and Harrison’s bipartisan gambit worked: The Senate unanimously approved Jackson one month before Cleveland’s inauguration.

This is why Judge Sri Srinivasan of the D.C. Circuit is receiving so much attention as a potential nominee to the nation’s highest tribunal. He served his judicial clerkships for Reagan appointees and moderate conservatives, 4th Circuit Court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, suggesting that he may have bipartisan appeal. He was born in India and grew up in Kansas, a compelling story of the American dream — and having the first Indian American justice replace the first Italian American on the Supreme Court would maintain a historic