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Harris 'Pragmatic' Legal Approach Could Face Supreme Court Critics

If Kamala Harris is elected president, she’ll be the fourth Democratic president in a row with a law degree.

Unlike Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who spent little or no time practicing law, Harris has extensive experience in the legal trenches. Her courtroom experience as a prosecutor has informed her views on criminal justice and judicial nominations. In the White House, where likely would take a results-oriented approach to the legal and constitutional questions that presidents face every day, reports Politico. “She’s willing to test the boundaries of the law when she sees something that in her view is an injustice,” said Dan Morain, a Harris biographer. Unlike Obama, who was president of the Harvard Law Review and taught constitutional law, Harris is not a creature of the legal academy. She has not spoken or written at length on her legal philosophy or how she thinks about constitutional interpretation. Her 2009 book, “Smart on Crime,” made the case for sentencing reforms as a way to protect municipal budgets.


She is a lawyer’s lawyer who, even as vice president and a candidate for president, is surrounded by lawyers. Her husband is an entertainment lawyer. Harris’ legal views developed over her two decades as a local prosecutor followed by six years as California attorney general. In her view, the law involves making practical choices with tough trade-offs. That may mean elevating concrete consequences over close adherence to legal doctrine. It’s an approach that most aligns with retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who embraced and expanded the concept of legal pragmatism. Breyer saw pragmatism as an alternative to originalism, the narrower, history-based approach favored by most judges and lawyers on the right. If Harris is elected, legal observers expect her to seek out judicial nominees in the mold of Breyer. Her pragmatic approach could run into a buzzsaw on the hyper-originalist Supreme Court, which would hear challenges to many policies adopted by her administration.


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A daily report co-sponsored by Arizona State University, Criminal Justice Journalists, and the National Criminal Justice Association

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