Merrick Garland

The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don't take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case; you make your best judgement. You only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty.

People must be confident that a judge's decisions are determined by the law and only the law. He must be faithful to the Constitution and statutes passed by Congress. Fidelity to the Constitution and the law has been the cornerstone of my life and the hallmark of the kind of judge I have tried to be.

Having a Congress with a more diverse educational and professional background would serve the country well. And given the budget challenges facing America today, we might benefit from a few more cold, calculating problem solvers, and fewer courtroom impresarios.

I did some research once on the way people in the past imagined the year 2000. They tended to picture the things they already had getting more sophisticated - flying cars, self-cleaning windows. And the folks in the early 1900s had a wildly optimistic estimate of the future of pneumatic tubes.