Merrick Garland — attorney general with roots in the Russian Empire
Merrick Brian Garland was born in Chicago on 13 November 1952 and grew up in Lincolnwood, Illinois, the son of Cyril Garland (1915–2000), who ran a small advertising business from the family home, and Shirley Garland. He was raised in the Conservative Jewish tradition. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through his grandparents.
When President Barack Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court in March 2016, Garland told the audience in the White House Rose Garden that his grandparents had left the Pale of Settlement in the early 1900s, fleeing antisemitism and hoping for a better life for their children in America. Wikipedia places their origins in what are now Ukraine and Poland; his father, born in Omaha, Nebraska, is described as coming from a Latvian Jewish immigrant family. The grandparents' names and towns have not been published.
Garland attended Niles West High School in Skokie and Harvard College, graduating in 1974, and received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1977. He clerked for Judge Henry Friendly of the Second Circuit and for Justice William Brennan of the Supreme Court, served as a special assistant to the Attorney General, and then practised at the Washington firm Arnold & Porter. He joined the Justice Department in 1993 as a deputy assistant attorney general and from 1994 was principal associate deputy attorney general, in which role he oversaw the prosecutions arising from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
In 1997 President Bill Clinton appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where he served as chief judge from February 2013 to February 2020. In March 2016 he was nominated to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia; the Senate held no hearings on the nomination, which lapsed in January 2017.
In January 2021 President Joe Biden chose him as Attorney General, and at his confirmation hearing in February he returned to his grandparents' story. The Senate confirmed him by 70 votes to 30 on 10 March 2021, and he served as the 86th Attorney General of the United States from 11 March 2021 to 20 January 2025.
Tracing the roots — Pale of Settlement, Russian Empire — grandparents (towns not documented)
In accepting his Supreme Court nomination in 2016 he said that his grandparents had left the Pale of Settlement in the early 1900s, hoping to make a better life for their children in America. His father, Cyril, born in Omaha, came from a Latvian Jewish immigrant family. Their towns are not recorded.
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Pale of Settlement, Russian Empire — grandparents (towns not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"My family's story is the story of America. Refugees who came here with nothing and built a life."