Tom Goldstein, a prominent appellate lawyer and owner of the SCOTUSblog, has named Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm as a “darkhorse” candidate in a blog posting discussing possible nominees for a Supreme Court seat if one should open up this summer.
 

In my opinion, if there is an appointment this summer — which principally means that some otherwise serious candidates will not yet have had the time to be appointed to a court of appeals and develop experience there — there are three reasonably clear front runners, and one dark horse candidate. All are women, for the simple reason that there is only one woman on the Court now and I cannot imagine that the President will conclude that he cannot find a highly qualified female nominee.

The three obvious candidates are Elena Kagan (SG), Sonia Sotomayor (CA2), and Diane Wood (CA7). The sleeper candidate is Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.

Elena Kagan is the former dean of Harvard Law School, just named to be Solicitor General in the Obama administration. Sotomayor and Wood are both court of appeals judges. Goldstein says that Granholm may be seen as a viable candidate in part because of her age; the trend in recent years has been to name younger justices.

I would agree with Goldstein that Granholm will likely be on a short list for such a nomination, but I doubt she would be chosen for a nomination that soon. The trend over the last 30 years has been to name sitting judges from lower courts to the Supreme Court when a seat opens and Granholm has never been a judge at any level.

While Granholm has the academic credentials as a graduate of Harvard Law School, she has no experience as a judge, though she was the Michigan Attorney General for 4 years and clerked for a federal appeals court judge. I think it is far more likely that she would receive a nomination to the federal bench first, either as a district judge or an appeals court judge, to build a resume for a possible Supreme Court nomination down the line.