Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement gives President Joe Biden a chance to make his first nomination to the high court. It’s also a chance for Biden to fulfill a campaign promise to nominate the first Black woman to be a justice. Some things to know about the women seen as leading candidates: KETANJI BROWN JACKSON Ketanji Brown Jackson has known Breyer for decades. A graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law school, she was a law clerk to Breyer from 1999 to 2000. She is comfortable enough with her former boss to have a little fun at his expense. In 2017, after Breyer accidentally brought his cellphone to court and it rang, Jackson introduced him at an event and pretended to get a call mid-introduction from Breyer’s colleague, Justice Neil Gorsuch. After clerking for Breyer, Jackson was as 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 the District of Columbia in 2013. Biden elevated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she has served since June 2021. Recently, Jackson 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, insurrection at the Capitol. Jackson, 51, also has the advantage of a connection to Republicans. She is related by marriage to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Jackson’s husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, a surgeon, is the twin brother of Ryan’s brother-in-law. The judge and her husband have two daughters. ___ LEONDRA KRUGER Leondra Kruger would be the first person in more than 40 years to move from a state court to the Supreme Court if she were to be chosen and confirmed as Biden’s nominee. The last justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a barrier-breaker who was the court’s first female justice. O’Connor was an Arizona Court of Appeals judge when nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, fulling his campaign promise to put a woman to Supreme Court. Kruger, 45, has been on the California Supreme Court since 2015. She was just 38 when chosen for the job by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. She’s seen as a moderate on the seven-member court. Kruger grew up in Los Angeles. She is the daughter of a Jamaican mother and Jewish father; both are pediatricians. She attended Harvard before getting her law degree from Yale. Like Jackson, she was a law clerk to 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. Kruger is the first California Supreme Court justice to have a baby while serving on the court. She and her husband have two children. ___ J. MICHELLE CHILDS J. Michelle Childs’ 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 Biden are longtime friends. Clyburn’s pivotal endorsement of Biden before South Carolina’s Democratic presidential […]

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