Progressive Justice Stephen Breyer will leave his post on the Supreme Court in the United States by the summer. Her retirement offers President Joe Biden the opportunity to appoint a black woman to the nation’s highest court for the first time.
The announcement was made yesterday: at 83, the judge Stephen Breyer set to quit Supreme Court. Joe Biden, who owes his election in large part to the mobilization of African-Americans, will therefore have to replace him and thus keep his campaign promise by appointing a black woman. A boon for the tenant of the White House, while all the polls show that more and more African-Americans are dissatisfied with their president.
Three names are coming up repeatedly in the American media today, three potential candidates in the running for this prestigious post of judge on the Supreme Court. The first is that of Ketanji Brown Jackson, often cited as the favorite candidate to replace Justice Stephen Breyer. Aged 51, she has sat since last summer on the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington DC, the second most powerful court in the country. To be able to access this post, all 50 Democratic senators, but also 3 Republican senators had supported her. A definite asset in a Senate more divided than ever.
Leondra Kruger, aged 45 and currently a judge on the Supreme Court of California, is the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant, she worked for the Obama administration. If nominated, it would make her not only the first black woman to serve, but also the youngest judge since Clarence Thomas joined the court in 1991 at age 43.
And then there is the atypical profile of michelle childs, 55 years. This high-flying lawyer comes from a blue-collar family in South Carolina. Nor is she part of the traditional American legal elite that graduates from the country’s prestigious law schools every year. These elements make Michelle Childs the representative of a new diversity dear to President Biden and which could prove useful for the message that the president wants to send.