First South Asian to a Fed Appeals Court Bench, Wins 97-0 Senate Approval

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate blessed the nomination of Sri Srinivasan to the D.C. Circuit with a unanimous 97-0 approval. Srinivasan is a deputy in the Office of the Solicitor General and represents the federal government both before appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. Srinivasan, who was born in India and raised in Kansas, will be the first South Asian to sit on a federal court of appeals.

The only other nominee to the D.C. Circuit, Caitlin Halligan, has been blocked twice by Republicans and withdrew from consideration in March.

In contrast, Srinivasan has stellar bipartisan credentials.

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While President Barack Obama said Srinivasan was a “trailblazer who personifies the best of America,” the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, said Srinivasan was “supremely qualified” for the job.

Srinivasan has the experience of clerking for two jurists appointed by President Ronald Reagan, then worked for five years in the Justice Department during the Bush administration and continued work as deputy to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, during the Obama administration.

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He also has a long standing relationship with the law firm O’Melveny & Meyers where he has practiced as an attorney. While he has the experience of arguing more than 25 high profile cases before the Supreme Court, in his best known case, he was able to succeed in overturning the criminal conviction for fraud of Enron chief Jeffrey K. Skilling. Though the Supreme Court upheld the other charges against Skilling, they agreed 9-0 to Srinivasan’s arguments in favor of holding the fraud conviction as wrongful.

Srinivasan’s popularity and acceptance among both Republicans and Democrats did not go unnoticed giving rise to speculations that he might be in line for the Supreme Court.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) remarked, “We may be seeing him coming before the Senate again soon.”
Srinivasan graduated from Stanford Law and clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor early in his career.