title: YES, Obama CAN Appoint A Supreme Court Justice Before He Leaves…But Will He?
text: The President who has thumbed his nose at our US Constitution, and clearly has no respect for our rule of law, has the ability to appoint a Supreme Court Justice before he vacates the White House, but will he? In those few moments the Senate will go into what s known as an  intersession recess,  creating one golden moment when the president could test his recess-appointment powers by sending Judge Garland to the high court.A smattering of activists has asked him to give it a try, but Mr. Obama has given no indication that he s thinking about it. The White House didn t respond to a request for comment for this story.The move would be a legal gamble under the high court s last ruling in 2014 on recess appointments. That 9-0 decision overturned a handful of Mr. Obama s early 2012 picks, saying the Senate was actually in session when the president acted, so he couldn t use his powers.That ruling also said, however, that there s a difference between appointments made during the annual yearlong session of Congress, dubbed  intrasession,  which Mr. Obama used in 2012, and picks made at the end of the year, after Congress adjourns, which are known as  intersession. William G. Ross, a law professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, said Mr. Obama would have the power to elevate Judge Garland. But he said it would be  politically unwise and damaging to the prestige of the court. The consensus, though, is that Mr. Obama would be making a mistake to test it that theory. I think it s fair to use the word stretch. I don t know why he would try this. It would backfire,  said Louis Fisher, a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project who served for decades as Congress  top expert on separation-of-powers issues.He said Mr. Obama s 9-0 loss in the 2014 case should still be stinging someone who earned his law degree from Harvard University and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Does he want to go down that road again?  Mr. Fisher said. Perhaps most problematic for Mr. Obama is that recess appointments have a shelf life. Even if he succeeds in putting Judge Garland on the bench, the appointment would expire at the close of 2017   and could end even earlier if the Senate confirms a full-fledged replacement named by Mr. Trump.Worse yet for Mr. Obama, Judge Garland would lose his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit   oftentimes dubbed the second-most powerful court in the country. That means the president would be trading a lifetime of Judge Garland for less than a year of Justice Garland. Since Garland could serve only a year, he presumably would accomplish little and his service would be clouded by the strange and controversial circumstances of his appointment,  said Mr. Ross, the law professor.For entire story  Washington Times