Leondra Kruger


Leondra Reid Kruger is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California and a former Obama administration official. She has been considered a strong future candidate for a nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Biography

Born in the Los Angeles area, Kruger grew up in South Pasadena, Her mother is Jamaican and her father is Jewish. She attended Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California. She then earned a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she wrote for the Harvard Crimson and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious Yale Law Journal. In the summer of 1999, she interned at the United States attorney's office in Los Angeles. In 2000, she worked as a summer associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson.
Kruger worked as an associate at the Jenner & Block law firm from 2001 until 2002. She then worked as a law clerk for Judge David Tatel on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2002 until 2003. Kruger then clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2003 until 2004.
From 2004 until 2006, Kruger was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr. She was a visiting assistant professor in 2007 at the University of Chicago Law School.
From 2007 until 2013, Kruger was an assistant to the United States Solicitor General and the acting principal deputy solicitor general. She argued 12 cases before the US Supreme Court.
In 2013, Kruger became a deputy assistant attorney general at the United States Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel.
On November 24, 2014, Governor Jerry Brown announced the appointment of Kruger to the California Supreme Court. She was confirmed on December 29, 2014, and replaced Associate Justice Joyce L. Kennard, who retired. She was sworn in on January 5, 2015, and became the court's second African-American woman justice, following Janice Rogers Brown. At age 38, she was the youngest appointee to the court in recent years and the third youngest appointee to the court ever, after Hugh C. Murray and M. C. Sloss. In November 2015, Kruger delivered the annual Bernard E. Witkin lecture before the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Her opinions include Barry v. State Bar of California, concerning subject matter jurisdiction and California's anti-SLAPP statute.
On the court, Kruger has emerged as a moderate, and is sometimes considered one of the swing votes when the court is occasionally divided.
Following presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's campaign pledge to appoint an African-American woman to the United States Supreme Court, Kruger became the subject of speculation as a future nominee to the high court. Her moderate jurisprudence, as well as her strong legal credentials, could help her nomination garner support in a divided Senate.

Personal life

Kruger is married to Brian Hauck, a partner at Jenner & Block in Los Angeles, and they have two children.

Videos