“I think it’s a virtual certainty Obama would appoint a woman. It’s absurd that the Supreme Court has only one woman, and everyone recognizes it,” said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who practices before the high court.
Three frequently mentioned candidates are Judges Diane Wood, 58, of the U.S. appeals court in Chicago; Sonia Sotomayor, 54, of the U.S. appeals court in New York; and Elena Kagan, 48, dean of Harvard Law School.
Wood knows Obama from her time teaching at the University of Chicago. Sotomayor could be the first Latino named to the high court. Kagan, who served as a domestic policy advisor to President Clinton, has won high marks from conservatives for bringing intellectual diversity to the liberal-dominated law faculty at Harvard.
Among Democrats, Govs. Janet Napolitano, 50, of Arizona and Jennifer M. Granholm, 49, of Michigan also are being talked about for top legal jobs in an Obama administration, either as U.S. attorney general or as future Supreme Court nominee. Both were federal prosecutors and attorneys general for their states before being elected governor.
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