California’s Supreme Court Was Split. Leondra Kruger Found the Center.
The New York Times
Known for her ‘elegant’ mind, the moderate judge, now on President Biden’s short list of potential high court nominees, could be a mediating force in Washington.
SACRAMENTO — In 2014, when then-Governor Jerry Brown nominated Leondra R. Kruger to the California Supreme Court, the immediate reaction in her home state was: Leondra who?
She was just 38. While she was born and brought up in California, her career had been in Washington, D.C., as a government lawyer. A retired veteran of the state appellate bench complained that her nomination was a “slap in the face” because she had “never been a judge at any level.” Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco, asked in The San Francisco Chronicle “why the governor had to go all the way to the East Coast” for a new justice.
“Were there no qualified African Americans in California?” wrote the mayor, who is African American.
