Justice Stephen Breyer’s coming retirement gives President Biden his first opportunity to fill a seat on the solidly conservative Supreme Court. His administration hasn’t made public any list of potential contenders, but the Democratic president has previously pledged to put the first Black woman on the high court. Here are some potential candidates for his shortlist:

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, joined the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in June after being confirmed by the Senate by a 53-44 vote, mostly along party lines.

Judge Jackson occupies the D.C. Circuit seat that had been long held by Merrick Garland before he became attorney general. Mr. Biden nominated her to the influential appellate court after she spent eight years as a federal trial judge in the nation’s capital. Her best-known case came when she ruled in 2019 that former White House counsel Don McGahn didn’t have absolute immunity from having to testify in a congressional investigation of then-President Donald Trump.

A Harvard Law School graduate and former clerk to Justice Breyer, Judge Jackson once represented indigent criminal defendants as a public defender and served as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets sentencing guidelines for federal criminal cases.

California Supreme Court Justice Leondra R. Kruger

Justice Leondra R. Kruger, 45, has spent seven years as an associate justice on the California Supreme Court, nominated to...

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