The White House said yesterday that more candidates could be added to its list of potential nominees to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the death of justice Antonin Scalia.
“We are still in a position where the list is not closed at this point,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters during a briefing. “There are still people being considered for inclusion on the list of people that the president may consider for filling a supreme court vacancy.”
The White House has not officially revealed its list of potential picks to replace Scalia. Earnest said he did not expect a nominee would be named before president Barack Obama meets with congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the matter.
Scalia’s death left the court with four conservative and four liberal justices, meaning that Obama’s nominee could tip the balance of the court to the left for the first time in decades.
Republicans, who control the Senate, have said the seat should remain vacant until Obama’s successor takes office next January so voters could have a say in the selection when they choose a new president in the November 8 election. But Obama has vowed to press ahead with nominating a justice.
Earnest said the White House would seek the help of former administration officials to coordinate outside activist groups in the fight over filling the vacancy.
The New York Times first reported on Friday that the administration was recruiting former Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter and former White House director of legislative affairs Katie Beirne Fallon to help in its campaign.
“We are going to draw on their contacts, and on the work they’re doing outside the administration to help us make the case, and organise the effort around the president’s constitutional responsibility to fill a vacancy on the supreme court,” Earnest said.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal trial judge in Washington, is being considered to fill the vacancy on the US supreme court, the National Law Journal reported on Friday, citing a lawyer who was contacted as part of the vetting process.
The unidentified lawyer was contacted this week and was asked about Jackson’s tenure on the US district court for the District of Columbia in the context of her being a potential nominee for the supreme court, the Journal said.
The lawyer described the conversation, which lasted less than 30 minutes, as a “preliminary inquiry”, the Journal reported.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the Journal story.
President Barack Obama is expected to announce a nominee in the next several weeks to replace justice Antonin Scalia, who died on February 13.
Scalia’s death left the court with four liberals and four conservatives, and Republican leaders in the Senate have vowed to block anyone Obama nominates. The Senate must confirm the nominee.
Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, a moderate Republican, took himself out of consideration for appointment to the supreme court this week after his name surfaced as a possible nominee.
If nominated and confirmed Jackson, 45, would be the first African-American woman on the Supreme Court.
She was confirmed to the federal district court in Washington in March 2013.
During her confirmation hearing, she received support from US house of representatives speaker Paul Ryan, who is related to her by marriage, the Journal reported. Jackson’s husband, Patrick Jackson, is the twin brother of Ryan’s brother-in-law William Jackson.
Jackson served as a federal public defender in Washington and then at a law firm. In 2010, she was appointed to the US sentencing commission.