Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement gives President Joe Biden the chance to fulfill his campaign promise to put the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.

If that happens, Biden’s pick would be the third Black justice and the sixth woman in the court’s history of more than 230 years. Biden could also heed calls from his liberal base to add professional diversity to a court without any former public defenders or civil rights lawyers.

Although the White House has been tight-lipped about its short list, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger are the consensus front-runners among Biden’s progressive allies.

Here are possible contenders:

Ketanji Brown Jackson

Jackson, 51, is widely regarded as the other leading candidate, alongside Kruger. A rising star in Washington legal circles, she is a former Breyer clerk and a federal appeals court judge who was in the middle of politically charged disputes during the Donald Trump era. She would bring another dimension of diversity to the Supreme Court as a former public defender.

Jackson was nominated by Obama to the federal district court in Washington, winning Senate confirmation in 2013. In her most prominent case, she ruled in 2019 that former White House counsel Don McGahn had to testify at a House impeachment hearing.

Jackson was nominated by Biden and confirmed last year by the Senate to the powerful D.C. Circuit to take the seat held by...

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