'Trailblazer' 'Sri' Srinivasan creates history as top US judge

Srinivasan 46 currently principal deputy solicitor general of the US was Thursday confirmed by the Senate by a 97 to 0 vote as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit often called the nation39s secondhighest court quotPleasedquot at the unanimous confirmation of his nominee quotthe first one to this important court in seven yearsquot President Barack Obama said quotSri is a trailblazer who personifies the best of Americaquot quotBorn in Chandigarh India and raised in Lawrence Kansas Sri spent nearly two decades as an extraordinary litigator before servingquot in his current job Obama noted predicting quotNow he will serve with distinction on the federal benchquot quotSri will in fact be the first South Asian American to serve as a circuit court judge in our historyquot he said as he pressed the Senate to act quickly to fill the three remaining vacancies on the appeals court quotas well as other vacancies across the countryquot The 11member court has been operating with just seven judges four Republican and four Democratic nominees throughout Obama39s tenure The influential Washington Post described Srinivasan39s confirmation as significant for Obama quothoping to shift the conservative tilt of the court which is poised to rule on several key elements of his secondterm agenda in the months aheadquot In fact like many other analysts Post noting that four of the Supreme Court39s current nine justices served on the DC Circuit suggested quotWith the vote Srinivasan also becomes a frontrunner to be nominated for a Supreme Court vacancy should one arise in the next three yearsquot For USA Today quotIt was just the latest chapter in a stellar legal career that has taken the 46yearold litigator known as quotSriquot to a seat on the nation39s second most powerful court and given him instant buzz as a potential Supreme Court justice himselfquot Even before his 180 approval by Senate Judiciary Committee last month the New Yorker suggested quotThe stakes in this nomination are clear if Srinivasan passes this test and wins confirmation he39ll be on the Supreme Court before President Obama39s termquot Ian Millhiser a senior constitutional policy analyst at the Centre for American Progress Action Fund agreed that quotSrinivasan may indeed emerge as a leading candidate for the Supreme Courtquot quotIn the mean timequot he suggested there were quotten potential Democratic Supreme Court nominees who aren39t named 39Sri39quot Among them he named California39s IndianAfricanAmerican Attorney General Kamala Harris and IndianAmerican Neal Kumar Katyal whom Srinivasan succeded Srinivasan39s family immigrated to the US when he was four He grew up in Lawrence Kansas where his father was a mathematics professor at the University of Kansas and his mother taught at the Kansas City Art Institute He received his BA with honours and distinction in 1989 from Stanford University and his JD with distinction in 1995 from Stanford Law School where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as an editor of the Stanford Law Review He received the Attorney General39s Award for Excellence in Furthering US National Security in 2003 and the Office of the Secretary of Defence Award for Excellence in 2005