US President Joe Biden vetting four people for supreme court job

US President Joe Biden says he is ‘not looking to make an ideological choice’, while four candidates for a Supreme Court vacancy.

US President Joe Biden said he is vetting four candidates for his coming Supreme Court nomination to succeed retiring judge Stephen Breyer.

“I’ve taken about four people and done the deep dive on them,” Mr Biden told NBC in an interview, excerpts of which were released by the network on Thursday. He said his administration was conducting background checks to “see if there’s anything in the background that would make them not qualified”.

“They were the honour students,” Mr Biden said of the shortlist of potential nominees.

“They come from the best universities. They have experience – some on the bench, some in the practice.”

He said he thought his nominee, who he has said will be a black woman, will get some Republican support.

“I’m not looking to make an ideological choice,” he said. “I’m looking for someone to replace judge Breyer with the same kind of capacity judge Breyer had — with an open mind, who understands the constitution, interprets it in a way that is consistent with the mainstream interpretation of the constitution.”

The President met Democratc members of the Senate judiciary committee on Thursday to discuss the nomination process.

Democrat senator Chris Coons, one of the committee members who attended the meeting with

Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including chairman Dick Durbin (centre), speak after a meeting with US President Joe Biden about his upcoming Supreme Court nominee. Picture: AFP

Mr Biden, said senators discussed nominating someone in the model of Justice Breyer.

“Someone who will write stirring, compelling, lasting arguments, hopefully in the majority at some point, but probably in the coming few years in the dissent,” Senator Coons said. “But someone who is persuasive.”

Committee chairman Dick Durbin, also in the meeting, said their goal was to have a bipartisan nominee.

“It will be great for the Senate,” he said. “It will be great for the ­Supreme Court. I hope we can achieve that goal.”

Asked how many Republicans they thought could back Mr Biden’s nominee, Senator Durbin said: “I think there are a lot of possibilities, and we’re working on all of them.”

The list of possible nominees is expected to include Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, a judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; Leondra Kruger, 45, a judge on the California Supreme Court; Julianna ­Michelle Childs, 55, a federal judge in South Carolina who has been nominated by Mr Biden to the DC appeals court; Candace Rae Jackson-Akiwumi, who joined the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago a few months ago; and Eunice Cheryl Lee, who has served on a federal appeals court in New York since last year.

Justice Breyer, 83, was appointed by Bill Clinton, in 1994.

He said last month he would retire at the end of the current term.

The White House has said Mr Biden will look to congress members from both parties, legal experts and Vice-President Kamala Harris for advice on the nomination.

The Wall Street Journal