“The state court bench as a SCOTUS farm team”

That didn’t take long.  Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Leondra Kruger haven’t even been sworn in yet as California Supreme Court justices and there is already talk about them (and continuing talk about three-year court veteran Justice Goodwin Liu) as potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees.  Professor Orin Kerr on the Volokh Conspiracy page of the Washington Post website writes that Governor Jerry Brown’s appointments of Liu, Cuéllar, and Kruger “make the California Supreme Court a court of national interest, in part because a Democratic President would likely consider Brown’s picks if there is a future U.S. Supreme Court vacancy on his or her watch.”

We noted almost three years ago that, depending on which party controls the White House when the next vacancy occurs, either Liu or Janice Rogers Brown could be serious candidates to become only the second judge to serve on both the California and the U.S. Supreme Court, and the first since President Lincoln appointed Stephen Field in 1863.  Now, apparently Cuéllar and Kruger are being added to that list.