Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is planning to retire from the high court. This will allow President Joe Biden to make a Supreme Court nomination while his party holds a nominal majority of the Senate.
While this pick will not change the ideological composition of the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, the confirmation would allow him to not pick a compromise candidate.
On Wednesday Biden said he wasn’t going to get ahead of Breyer’s announcement, “Every justice should have an opportunity to decide what he or she is going to do and announce it on their own. Let him make whatever statement he’s going to make and I’ll be happy to talk about it later.”
Biden on the campaign trail in 2020 did promise to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court. He also pledged to
make the federal courts more diverse, which looking at his first year in office, he’s done a good job of keeping. Of the 40 judges that have won their nominations, 80% are women and 53% are people of color.
Speculation on possible candidates for the nomination is strong, with several names being suggested. The top three so far seem to be U.S. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger.
Both Judge Brown Jackson and Judge Childs have been nominated by President Biden for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, with Brown Jackson’s nomination already having been confirmed last year.
Brown-Jackson has Miami ties. She was a speech and debate superstar at Miami Palmetto Senior High School, where she was a senior in 1988. Her father was an attorney for the Miami-Dade School Board and her mother was the principal at New World School of the Arts.
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California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger
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South Carolina US District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs
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DC Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
Justice Kruger’s history includes serving as clerk for the late Justice John Paul Stevens as well as part of the Solicitor General’s office for the federal government. In her role there, she argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised a quick nomination for whoever President Biden nominates.