A pair of influential South Carolina lawmakers who want the president to elevate Michelle Childs to the Supreme Court are pressing Joe Biden to send a message with the pick that the federal bench is attainable for Americans who did not attend a set of elite colleges.
Biden has committed to diversifying the Supreme Court by appointing the first Black woman to serve as a justice, but Congressman Jim Clyburn and Sen. Lindsey Graham say he should go even further and choose someone who earned their degrees from public schools.
Amy Coney Barrett is the only current Supreme Court justice who did not attend an Ivy League college. She attended the University of Notre Dame, a private Catholic school in Indiana.
“That’s not Ivy League, but it’s private,” said Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, in an interview.
Several of the judges who Biden is said to be seriously considering graduated from Ivy League schools such as Yale and Harvard that are expensive to attend and out of reach for most Americans.
U.S. District Court Judge Childs, 55, obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of South Florida and her law degree from the University of South Carolina — an educational experience that her backers say makes her reflective of a broader group of Americans.
“Certainly as someone who comes from a public undergraduate, public law school has a perspective as having rubbed shoulders with people who may not have the opportunity and the means to attend an Ivy League school or elite private institution. It gives you a perspective, helps ground you,” said William Hubbard, dean of the USC Law School. “Often students who come out of law school like USC don’t have a sense of entitlement, that they’re destined for these ... lofty positions. They know they have to work hard, prove themselves.”
Childs is a Detroit native, raised by a single mother who moved her to Columbia, South Carolina. She told her alma mater she decided on USC Law because she wanted to practice law in South Carolina.
“It is a very reputable and competitive school, so I believed that it would provide me a solid legal foundation, opportunities to connect with the local bar, and the ability to enhance my career options,” she said.
Biden has said he intends to announce his pick by month’s end.
The White House acknowledged early in the process that Childs was under consideration, but it has declined to provide other details on the vetting process, including when and where Biden will be meeting with potential justices.
Women thought to be on Biden’s shortlist include California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, who attended Harvard and Yale, and U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who received her degrees at Harvard.
“All of the women who are up are eminently qualified. I just think what sets Judge Childs apart is this experience that is like most other Americans, of going to schools that are not Ivy League, that you have a background of this educational diversity that most Americans have,” said Bakari Sellers, a civil rights attorney and former South Carolina legislator.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week she understood the push for Biden to nominate someone with a non-Ivy League resume to the seat Justice Stephen Breyer is vacating but declined to explicitly lay out whether educational background was one of the qualifications Biden is looking at.
“What the president’s focus is on is choosing from a wealth of highly qualified candidates who bring to bear the strongest records, credentials and abilities that anyone could have for this role,” Psaki said. “As you know, he has nominated judges who have not gone to Ivy League schools, so I think that speaks to his value for that. “
National Women’s Law Center president and CEO Fatima Goss Graves said she would be surprised if the president weighed Ivy League or public school credentials in his Supreme Court selection process.
“I think it would be an odd thing to discount the accomplishments of those Black woman attorneys who went to Ivy Leagues when you’re not discounting the accomplishments of the other people who are on the Supreme Court who went to Ivy Leagues,” she said. “I also think it would be an odd thing to discount the accomplishments of someone who went to a public university.”
Clyburn said that he has not spoken with Biden about the Supreme Court vacancy, but he suspects that Biden is sympathetic to the argument that he and other Childs supporters are making.
Biden has boasted that he did not attend Ivy League school and routinely speaks about the possibilities that await ordinary Americans when they are given a chance to succeed. The president went to the University of Delaware, a public college. He earned his law degree from Syracuse University, a private school in New York.
During his presidential campaign, Biden referred to himself as a “state school guy,” and said of his education, “I was proud of it. Hard to get there, hard to get through in terms of money.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is advising Biden in the selection process, did not attend an Ivy League school, either. Harris went to Howard University, a historically Black college, and University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
Seeking bipartisan support
Clyburn is also pushing Childs on the grounds that her potential nomination could win at least some Republican support. He said he has talked with Graham, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and other Senate Republicans about Childs.
Although he said he does not have a running tally of lawmakers who could vote for the South Carolina judge if Biden appoints her to the court, Clyburn — who is the chief voter counter for House Democrats — suggested in his interview with McClatchy that senators on both sides of the aisle found her personal story appealing.
“There are a lot of people who I’ve talked to who are very drawn to the public school education, having overcome coming out of a single-parent household, going to school, only getting to school because of scholarships, a lot of people are sensitive to that,” Clyburn said. “A lot of people can identify with that.”
Childs never clerked for a Supreme Court justice, has not served on a federal circuit court and never worked for the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel — experiences that some legal experts say make the other women Biden is considering more likely to be selected.
Mohammad Jazil, a Tallahassee based-attorney with Holtzman Vogel who has briefed cases before the Supreme Court, said Childs “shouldn’t be disqualified from being considered for a seat on the United States Supreme Court because she didn’t check every expected box you’re supposed to check.”
Biden did nominate Childs to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in December. But her nomination was put on hold as Biden considers a Supreme Court appointment.
Clyburn’s argument about Childs’ educational background appears to be resonating with key senators, whose votes Biden could need for his nominee, if not the president himself.
Senators have a constitutionally guaranteed right to provide advice and consent on federal judicial appointments, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings and listen to testimony before a final vote is held on Biden’s nominee.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who’s often a swing Democratic member of the Senate, said Sunday that the three judges who are routinely named as possible picks are extremely qualified, before he mentioned Childs by name and the “grassroots support” he said the judge has.
“The bottom line is, look for the person that has the upbringing and things that basically would make someone a real rounded candidate, and you look at the makeup of the Supreme Court,” Manchin said on CNN.
Graham, a former Senate Judiciary chairman who has crossed the aisle to vote for Biden’s judicial nominees in the past — including Jackson — has indicated that he prefers Childs. The Republican senator with a law degree from the University of South Carolina said he could not think of a better person for Biden to nominate to the Supreme Court.
USC Law Dean Hubbard also said Childs is the “right person” to sit on the federal bench.
“This potential nomination, of course, it will elevate this law school and university,” Hubbard said. “But what’s unique about it is how much support she has from every sector. Everyone who has ever been exposed to Michelle Childs (notices her) strength of character, her hard work, her determination, her positive spirit, her willingness to give, her sense of duty.
“And not because of what it will do for us, there is that excitement, but because she is the right person for our country,” Hubbard said.
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Miami Herald reporter Bryan Lowry contributed to this article.
