CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-WASHINGTON, D.C. –White House officials held a press call with reporters and legal advocates on April 12 to discuss a letter from American Bar Association affiliates that calls for U.S. Senate leaders to give Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland a fair Senate confirmation hearing and a timely vote. (Editor's note: Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper, was invited to participate per an email from the White House).

Read the letter by 15 former presidents of the American Bar Association by clicking HERE.

The letter, dated April 11, is addressed to Senate GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, and Senate Committee on the Judiciary ranking member Patrick Leahy.

It urges in relevant part that "the members of the United States Senate give Chief Judge Garland’s nomination meaningful consideration by holding a fair hearing and timely vote."

Legal advocates discussing the controversial issue with White House officials during Tuesday's teleconference were Martha Barnett, former president of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2001, Dennis Archer, former president of the American Bar Association from 2003 to 2004, and William Neukom, former president of the American Bar Association from 2007 to 2008.

Per the constitution, the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices of the nation's highest court, a life long appointment.

Garland is a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. and  currently chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

He was twice a finalist whom President Obama last considered in 2009 but chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor instead.

The scholarly Garland, 63, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1974 and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1977.

A moderate who has served on the appellate bench for nearly two decades, he is the grandson of Jewish immigrants who migrated from Eastern Europe.

A Democrat, the president has appealed to the Republican controlled Senate, and seeks fair play for his nominee, his third Supreme Court nominee since taking office in 2009.

"I hope they're fair, Obama said of Senate Republicans during his Rose Garden announcement March 16 of his Supreme Court choice to replace longtime conservative justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month. "That's all I hope. I hope they are fair."

Senate Republicans have said that they will not even meet to consider the president's nomination for the nine-member court until after the November presidential election. This has angered Congressional Democrats and  a host of others, including Black  leaders and the NAACP. They complain that the blocking effort by Congressional Republicans is a mean spirited attempt to deny the country's first Black president his  constitutional authority to recommend a Supreme Court nominee.