Mark Sherman for AP:

Harder to predict, based on his record, is what Garland would do in cases that ask the high court to jettison one of its decisions.

As it happens, that’s precisely what Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton want the court to do with the 2010 Citizens United ruling on campaign finance that’s hated by their party. Citizens United was a 5-4 outcome with Scalia in the majority.

Garland’s record in campaign finance cases in recent years is mixed.

He joined his colleagues in a unanimous vote to strike down limits on contributions to independent advocacy groups, a decision that led to the rise of super political action committees.

The court concluded that its ruling in March 2010 was compelled by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case two months earlier that freed corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited sums of money in elections for Congress and president, though independent of any campaign for office.

In a second case, Garland wrote for a unanimous court last July to uphold a 70-year-old ban on campaign contributions from people who hold contracts with the federal government. Garland wrote that the ban was in line with the government’s interest in preventing corruption.

Election law expert Richard Hasen of the University of California at Irvine law school wrote that he is persuaded that Garland would vote to uphold challenged campaign finance restrictions like the one he confronted last year.

And if he had been on the court when Citizens United was decided, he would have been with the dissenters, Hasen said. But the issue now is whether Garland would be willing to overturn the ruling.