Justice Kamala Harris?

Just last week, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement. Immediately, Americans recalled President Biden’s campaign trail promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court and held him to it. Although his choice won’t be announced until late February, the media is already focusing on several key players: California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, D.C. Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, and Federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson chief among them. But there’s been mutterings of another option: VPOTUS Kamala Harris.

It’s never been done before—but it can be done. Law scholars and the Constitution concur that a sitting VP may be elevated to the bench, so long as they vacate the Vice Presidency. All a Supreme Court Justice needs is a nomination from the President and a simple majority from the Senate. There’s no mention of age, degree, citizenship, or even profession. In fact, past Justices have included self-taught lawyer James F. Byrnes and (at the time) unlicensed Robert H. Jackson.

Granted, most Supreme Court Justices are middle-aged, hold law degrees, and have storied careers in law prior to the bench. Even taking into account these de facto standards, Harris is more than qualified. Since graduating from UC Hastings College of the Law in 1989, she has risen from deputy district attorney to district attorney to state Attorney General to state Senator (serving on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Judiciary Committee, among others) to Vice President of the United States.

And so, if Biden can legally make the nomination, and Harris can conceivably win confirmation, the only remaining question is why they should.

First and foremost, this is about depoliticizing and securing the future impartiality of the court. Should Democrats lose their slim Senate majority in this year’s midterm elections—and between gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the classic backlash against the sitting party, they are fully expected to—a GOP-led Senate is unlikely to confirm a liberal or even a centrist nominee. In four short years, Trump appointed three new Supreme Court Justices, the most of any president since the Reagan era, and in doing so moved the court solidly to the right, with six of the nine current justices leaning conservative. As each of his picks are in their fifties, they could easily serve twenty more years of their lifetime appointments. Breyer’s retirement is calculated to avoid an even more skewed court by letting Biden capitalize on the current moment and get his pick confirmed.

A Harris appointment would make the most out of the opportunity by putting a Black woman on the Supreme Court for the first time in history and giving the seat to a known quantity.

A Harris appointment would make the most out of the opportunity by putting a Black woman on the Supreme Court for the first time in history and giving the seat to a known quantity. After all, it’s common knowledge that not every President’s appointee will actually be favorable to their agenda. But with a clear partisan divide (and not in his favor) among the current lineup, Biden needs his pick to be patently liberal to have any hope of having a balanced court once more.

Beyond that, a Justice Harris would also open up a VP slot in the government, breathing new life and momentum into an administration that’s fallen from a 53% approval rating this time last year to a paltry 41.7% in the present day. Part of that is due to Biden’s less-than-stellar track record in addressing public priorities: economic recovery, healthcare reform, student loan forgiveness, and so on. But in making one of his earlier campaign promises a reality, he can begin to turn that all around, emboldening longtime supporters and potentially even winning back disillusioned ones.

Kamala Harris will undoubtedly play a large role in the coming days—if not as a nominee herself, then as a key figure in the appointment process. After all, this is her wheelhouse: she’s questioned SCOTUS nominees as part of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she has a strong familiarity with current committee members and their aides, and she has insider knowledge of what exactly the Biden administration is aiming to achieve before midterms. And whether she’s up for the job or evaluating others for it, she is the best-qualified person in this administration to know exactly what it takes.

Seth Jacobson is the founder and principal of JCI Worldwide, a Los Angeles-based communications and research firm. He spent several years in the Carter and Clinton administrations in positions focused on economic development, foreign policy, and media relations. He is a frequent lecturer on policy and public affairs at Pepperdine University and UCLA.