Biden’s Supreme Court Short List: Ketanji Brown Jackson, Leondra Kruger, Kamala Harris

ketanji-Brown-Jackson-Leondra-Kruger-Kamala-Harris-AP-Getty
Kevin Lamarque, S. Todd Rogers/AP, Mandel Ngan/Getty

President Joe Biden committed during the 2020 presidential election to nominating a black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court –though he would not, unlike President Donald Trump, reveal a list of candidates for the public to scrutinize.

While there are many outstanding black female attorneys and jurists, there are still few on the federal bench or in senior judicial positions, making Biden’s list of potential candidates an unusually short one. Here are three possible nominees:

U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson – Jackson has the distinction of having passed Senate confirmation already in the recent past, making it through the process last year on a 53-47 vote, with three Republicans joining Democrats in voting for her. She is considered a liberal, one who ruled frequently against the Trump administration in her tenure on the D.C. district court. But she is not considered as potentially radical as Kruger (see below).

Justice Leondra Kruger of the California Supreme Court – She was appointed by fellow Yale Law School alum Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in 2014. Breitbart News reported at the time: “Kruger has compiled an impressive legal career in a short time, including work at the U.S. Supreme Court, but has never served on the bench or practiced law in California.” The Los Angeles Times reported in 2020 that she had emerged as a “moderate,” though that is relative to a liberal California court.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris – Harris failed the Bar exam, and would be the first Supreme Court justice to have done so. But she does have a long legal career behind her: she was elected District Attorney of San Francisco, and also California Attorney General. She is considered to have radical views on a variety of issues, and prosecuted anti-abortion filmmaker David Daleiden. But nominating her would help the West Wing solve political problems about potentially replacing Biden.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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