the retirement of Judge Stephen G. Breyer will give President Biden a chance to make history and deliver on his promise to appoint a bl...
the retirement of Judge Stephen G. Breyer will give President Biden a chance to make history and deliver on his promise to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court, a campaign-year promise that helped revive his flagging campaign.
Mr. Biden made the promise during a debate in February 2020, just days before facing his Democratic rivals in the primary in South Carolina, where blacks make up a large part of the party’s voters. At the time, his campaign was struggling amid losses in two of the first presidential elections.
“I look forward to making sure there is a black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure everyone is effectively represented,” Mr Biden said that evening.
The pledge helped Mr Biden win the support of Rep. James Clyburn, a veteran black South Carolina Democrat, just days before the party’s contest in that state. Last year Mr Clyburn confirmed a report in the book ‘Peril’, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, that he had urged Mr Biden to make the pledge during the debate.
“I have three daughters,” Mr Clyburn said told Bloomberg. “I think I’d be less than a good dad if I didn’t tell the future president it’s a simmering question in the African American community that black women think they have just as much right to sit down on the Supreme Court like all the other women, and until then none had been considered.
With Mr. Clyburn’s endorsement, Mr. Biden continued win the South Carolina primaryproving the durability of his support among black voters and sparking a winning streak on Super Tuesday soon after.
In the weeks and months that followed, Mr. Biden repeated the promise. And after becoming president, Mr. Biden made it clear that he intended to keep his promise if given the chance.
Asked during a press briefing in March, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, confirmed that the president remained committed to the promise.
“Of course, to appoint an African-American woman to the Supreme Court,” she said. “Yes, absolutely.”
Mr. Biden has not said who he will appoint. But speculation has focused on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, who graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Breyer, and Judge Leondra R. Kruger of the California Supreme Court, graduated from Yale Law School and served as law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens.
In a meeting with Mr. Biden in the oval officeMr. Clyburn lobbied for Judge J. Michelle Childs of the District Court of Columbia, SC, a graduate of the University of South Carolina Law School and a former law firm partner who also worked in state government.
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