Kamala Harris can be new US Supreme Court Chief Justice? CNN analyst Bakari Sellers' big claim
CNN's Bakari Sellers, has proposed a career change for vice president after she lost out to Donald Trump in the presidential elections.
After failing to be the first woman president of United States can Kamala Harris become the next Supreme Court Chief Justice?
CNN's Bakari Sellers, has proposed a career change for vice president after she lost out to Donald Trump in the presidential elections. Sellers is a Democratic member of the South Carolina House of Representatives for eight years. During the show, CNN News Central, he proposed, 70-year-old liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor could retire from the Supreme Court, allowing President Joe Biden to nominate Harris.
When host John Berman asked Sellers about concerns among Democrats regarding Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate, he suggested Biden can consider potentially replacing Sotomayor, the third-oldest member of the Supreme Court.
Sellers has proposed Sotomayor to step down so Biden and the current Democratic majority can replace her before Trump’s inauguration. This he states will ensure another liberal justice on the court.
Kamala Harris new US Supreme Court Chief Justice
"You know, Justice Sotomayor has been a more than able justice. I know that she may be having some personal issues that she contends with while serving on the bench. But, you know, I don’t want Justice Sotomayor to be another Ruth Bader Ginsburg in terms of staying too long," Sellers said.
"And so I hope that Joe Biden makes the next ten weeks as consequential as he can. I don’t care about drawing outside the lines or what Republicans may think about it. This is within your purview. You can actually do it and you should do it. And you know, one more thing, John, is you have a hell of a vice president right there who has a legal pedigree to sit on the Supreme Court. And let Republicans go crazy, ape, I’m even mentioning that option."
Berman who appeared shocked at the suggestion and asked to clarify if Sellers was floating the idea of Harris becoming a Supreme Court justice.
Harris was San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general before being elected senator, and then vice president. While electing an attorney with no judicial experience to the court is unusual, it is not unprecedented.
According to Reuters, President-elect Donald Trump, who moved the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically rightward in his first term, may get a chance to rejuvenate its 6-3 conservative majority by replacing some or all of its three most senior conservatives with younger jurists.
"I think it likely that one or both of Justices Thomas and Alito step down in the next presidential term, and perhaps the chief justice, too," Cornell Law School professor Gautam Hans said. "There are multiple federal judges that were confirmed under President Trump that I would anticipate being on a short list to replace them." And Trump would be able to expand the court's conservative majority to 7-2 if one of the three liberal justices steps down during his presidency. The oldest of the three, Sonia Sotomayor, is 70 and has type 1 diabetes.