Friday, November 28, 2014

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Meet 38-Year-Old Leondra Kruger, CA Supreme Court Nominee


Leondra Kruger, 38, is Governor Jerry Brown's nominee for the current vacancy on the California Supreme Court.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the appointment:
Kruger, who is African American, joined the Office of Solicitor General under President George W. Bush and argued 12 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. She left the solicitor general's office last year and became deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel. 
"Watching her at the U.S. Supreme Court was like watching a master who had done it hundreds of times," said Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University. "It was breathtaking." 
Kruger was Brown's third appointment in recent years to the seven-member court. His other appointees are Goodwin Liu, a former UC Berkeley law professor, and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, a Stanford law professor. She will be the court's third Democratic appointee. 
"With Brown's last two appointments and now with Leondra coming on the court, the California Supreme Court is looking like perhaps the most high-powered state supreme court in the country," Katyal said.
Kruger has the impressive credentials of someone whose judicial career may be beginning, not ending with a state Supreme Court appointment:
Kruger served as a law clerk to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens from 2003 to 2004 and to Judge David S. Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2002 to 2003. She also taught at the University of Chicago for a year. 
She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard and her law degree from Yale University, where she was editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal.
Hopefully Kruger's appointment will be confirmed quickly. If so, she will become the second African American female to serve on the California Supreme Court. The first, Janice Rogers Brown, was named to the D.C. Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush and still serves there now. Leondra Kruger is today's Celebrity Friday because hopefully her name is one that will be heard again in a national context soon!

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