Kamala Harris
Attorney General, California
Harris holds a lot of firsts: the first female, first African-American, and first Asian-American California attorney general. The New York Times recently lauded her for her slick and confident, if risky, handling of a nationwide foreclosure-lawsuit settlement, which ultimately netted her state the biggest chunk of benefit dollars.
“She’s written a good bit on reducing crime and recidivism, and she is a potential governor of California,” Wenger says. That is, assuming she doesn’t get an even more high-profile job. With a slew of caveats (that Barack Obama is reelected, that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires), Harris is the most likely candidate to land a Supreme Court nomination in 2015, according to SCOTUSBlog. And she’s only 47.
In March, Harris will participate in a panel discussion on women and justice as part of Newsweek/The Daily Beast’s Women in the World Summit.
