Supreme Court nominee Garland talks to Harvard Law School class

Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland told entering Harvard Law School students on Friday that they shouldn’t expect a predictable career path because life can take surprising turns.

Garland recounted his own varied career, which saw him leave private practice to become a federal prosecutor. He later became a federal appeals court judge before he was picked to fill a vacancy on the nation’s high court.

“You never have any idea of what’s going to come,” he said.

It was a rare public appearance for Garland, whose nomination has been pending for more than five months. Senate Republicans have vowed not to hold a hearing or a vote on a high court nominee until a new president takes office.

Garland took questions from the school’s dean during an orientation event for new students. He offered no comment about his nomination or the heated presidential race in which the Supreme Court has emerged as a key issue.

A 1977 graduate of the law school, Garland spent much of his talk discussing his role overseeing investigations into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the case of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. He choked up as he recalled seeing the massive crater where the front of the federal building in Oklahoma had been blown off.

“We made a promise that we would find the people who did this,” he said.

Garland has mostly avoided speaking in public since he was picked to fill the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. He gave the commencement address at his Illinois high school in May and spoke at a graduation ceremony for fifth-graders in June at a Washington, D.C., elementary school where he has been tutoring students for years.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has suggested he will use procedural maneuvers

WASHINGTON — For five months, Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland has awaited Senate action on his confirmation — to no avail, as the chamber’s Republican leaders insist that the next president fill the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s February death.

But there are a few activists off of Capitol Hill who are turning to outside venues to force action on Garland’s nomination to the high court: The courts themselves.

The latest attempt comes from Steve Michel, an environmental lawyer from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington this week seeking to compel Senate leaders to take action on Garland, arguing that the case “has created a constitutional crisis that threatens the balance and separation of power among our three branches of government.”

“There really isn’t some agenda here other than just try and restore some function to government,” Michel said in an interview. “Most lawyers, when there’s an official who isn’t doing something they’re required to do, you start thinking mandamus” — the Latin term for a judicial order compelling the government to act.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, are named as defendants in the case, alongside the Senate itself.

Even if the D.C. judge accepts that Michel is entitled to bring his case, Michel will still face a tough road persuading him to wade into a dispute between the executive and legislative branches — especially one that is hardly settled by a plain reading of the Constitution.

Michel is making an argument that has been embraced by many Democrats in Congress and by White House officials — that under Article II of the Constitution, the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint” Supreme Court justices and that the Senate is thus compelled to provide that advice and consent by holding a vote on the nominee.

Most Republicans and many experts have taken the view that the constitutional language is ambiguous at best and that the Senate is entitled to simply withhold its consent by not taking action. to try and force a vote on Garland when the Senate returns next month from a seven-week break. Democrats accuse Senate Republicans of obstruction for refusing to even hold a hearing on Garland’s nomination.