Odds on the Next Obama Nominee for the Supreme Court

Following the unexpected death of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia this past weekend and US President Barack Obama’s vow to nominate another Supreme Court Justice in the coming weeks, Bookmaker has released odds on the next Obama nominee for the US Supreme Court.   

Among the first names mentioned, Sri Srinivasan.  Bookmaker lists him with slightly longer than 2-1 odds as the favorite.

Senior Legal Analyst for CNN Jeffrey Toobin made mention of Srinivasan almost immediately upon news of Scalia’s death broke.

"The stakes in this nomination are clear: if Srinivasan passes this test and wins confirmation, he'll be on the Supreme Court before President Obama's term ends," Toobin wrote for the New Yorker Magazine and has subsequently tweeted the same.

The 48-year-old circuit judge would be the first SCOTUS justice of Indian descent.  He has made "twenty or so arguments in the Supreme Court," helping to take down the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. 

That alone might scare of gamblers into betting on a Srinivasan nomination.  But the thinking process here is that conservatives did in fact unanimously confirm his D.C. Circuit nomination in 2013.

"If we lived in a world where we had the rule of a judge, rather than the rule of law, you would have seen an absolute sea change, an avulsive change in the law as it was interpreted, applied and rendered by our court," Srinivasan said, according to Politico.

In early betting, Srinivasan was seeing more than half the action.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch was coming in with the next shortest odds, just shy of 4-1. 

Jonathan Martin of the New York Times explains the thought process here:

The combination of her gender and race, her ample qualifications and her previous support among Republicans would put immense pressure on them to at least vote on her nomination. Such a selection would also allow Mr. Obama to hammer at Republicans if they did not approve her, helping the Democratic presidential nominee and putting Republican senators up for re-election in moderate or liberal-leaning states with substantial black populations — such as Mark S. Kirk of Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania — in a political vise.

Both Merrick Garland and Kamala Harris were coming in at 5-1 odds.

The full breakdown of the xext Obama nominee for the Supreme Court appear below and are subject to change if not locked in here.

WHO WILL OBAMA NOMINATE TO FILL THE SUPREME COURT?

Percentages represent the number of bets placed on each side of any given wager.

- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com