WASHINGTON — Help wanted: Well-respected liberal jurist. Black. Female. Seniors need not apply.
President Joe Biden’s search for a nominee to the Supreme Court isn’t just limited by credentials, race and gender. The reality for the nation’s oldest president — and for any president — is that for a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court, youth is particularly prized.
It’s simple math. The younger Biden’s nominee, the longer she is likely to serve as a justice. The longer she serves as a justice, the longer liberals can expect to hold a seat on the court now dominated 6-3 by conservatives.
“Younger is considered better, but not so young that you don’t have a track record,” said C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel to former President George H.W. Bush. And the age issue extends to nominating federal judges at all levels, he said.
Balancing age and experience, recent presidents have picked nominees in their late 40s and 50s, with 60 generally seen as the very upper end of the range. All three of Biden’s most talked-about potential nominees are in that age window, but there’s also a decade between the youngest and oldest.
California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger is 45, while South Carolina federal Judge J. Michelle Childs is 55. In between is Washington, D.C., federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51.
Breyer’s fellow Clinton nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated at 60 and served until her death in 2020 at 87.
“Some people thought I was too old for the job,” Ginsburg said in 2019 at an event with Clinton. Noting that she was starting her 27th year on the court, she told the former president: “If you worried about my age, it was unnecessary.”
“I did worry about it,” the Democrat acknowledged, describing age as a “serious issue.”
The concern about a nominee’s potential longevity cuts across party lines. In 1991, when Justice Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement at 82, then-President George H.W. Bush said he would look for a nominee who “believes in the Constitution of the United States” and also “somebody who will be able to serve for a while.”
He chose Clarence Thomas, then 43. No nominee since has been younger. Last year, Thomas marked 30 years on the bench. The Supreme Court’s youngest-ever nominee was 32-year-old Joseph Story, who joined the court in 1812 and served for more than 30 years.
Former President Donald Trump also picked young nominees. Neil Gorsuch was the youngest in a quarter century when he was nominated at 49. He was followed by Brett Kavanaugh, then 53, and Amy Coney Barrett, then 48. The remaining members of the court — Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Samuel Alito — were nominated at 50, 50, 54 and 55 respectively.
