Biden's Supreme Court pick: The top 3 contenders
President Joe Biden has three judges on his short list as he nears a Supreme Court pick.
They are Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; Leondra Kruger, 45, of the California Supreme Court; and J. Michelle Childs, 55, a federal judge in South Carolina. Jackson is seen as the top candidate.
Biden pledged to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. His nominee, if confirmed, will replace retiring Justice Stephen G. Breyer.
Biden has said he will decide by the end of February. His State of the Union is March 1.
Learn more about the three top contenders.
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin
Jackson was appointed by Biden as a circuit judge and has served on the appeals court since June. She was confirmed 53-44, with three Republican senators supporting her.
A graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School, Jackson was a law clerk to Breyer from 1999 to 2000. After that she was a lawyer in private practice, worked as a public defender and served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. President Barack Obama nominated her to be a federal trial court judge in D.C. in 2013.
Jackson is the favorite of progressives.
Recently, she was part of a three-judge panel that ruled against former President Donald Trump's effort to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
She and her husband have two daughters.
Jackson is seen in her office at U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington on Friday.
Leondra Kruger
Credit: AP/Jeff Chiu
Kruger, a California Supreme Court justice since 2015, would be the first person in more than 40 years to move from a state court to the Supreme Court if confirmed. The last was Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice.
Kruger grew up in Los Angeles and attended Harvard before getting her law degree from Yale. Like Jackson, she clerked for a Supreme Court justice -- John Paul Stevens.
Before moving back to California, Kruger worked for the Department of Justice. She argued a dozen cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government, including one involving religious schools' ability to fire teachers.
She is seen as a moderate on the California court. She is also the first California Supreme Court justice to have a baby while serving on the court. She and her husband have two children.
Kruger is seen in San Francisco on Feb. 3.
J. Michelle Childs
Credit: AP/Meg Kinnard
Childs's resume doesn't include a law degree from Harvard or Yale or service on a federal appeals court, common characteristics of the current justices. But she has a powerful backer who has Biden's ear: Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.).
Clyburn and the president are longtime friends. Clyburn's pivotal endorsement of Biden before South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary in February 2020 is seen as critical in Biden's path to the nomination.
Childs is a graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law. She also has a graduate business degree from the University of South Carolina, and a different legal degree from Duke.
She specialized in employment law, becoming the first Black female partner at Nexsen Pruet, one of South Carolina's largest firms, before leaving private practice to work for the state's department of labor.
Later she was a state court judge, and has been a federal trial court judge since 2010. Biden nominated her in December to be an appeals court judge for the D.C. circuit. She is considered the most moderate among those on the short list.
Childs is seen working in her chambers in Columbia, S.C., on Friday.
Jericho condo fire ... English Regents scores up ... One mega jackpot! ... Migrants' plight
