Joe Biden would nominate Obama to Supreme Court 'if he'd take it'

Just one US president – William Taft – made transition between top two branches of government

Joe Biden has said he would nominate his former boss for a slot on the US Supreme Court, if the ex-president was open to such an arrangement.

Campaigning in Iowa, the first state to vote in the 2020 political cycle and which holds its primary in February, Mr Biden was asked if Barack Obama would be among those he would consider for the nation’s highest court.

“If he’d take it, yes,” Mr Biden replied.

He then said he would look to appoint to the court, people who saw the US constitution as a “living” document, rather than one that was rigidly fixed in time.

He added: “I said years ago, I’ll be satisfied when half the court is women.”

Donald Trump, who has successfully placed two conservative justices to the court, has said several times he considers it among the most important roles a president has.

His administration has also worked to fill lower courts with right-leaning judges, partly to repay social conservatives and evangelical Christians who voted for him in big numbers in 2016.

CNN said the idea of nominating Mr Obama had been raised before, including when the Democratic Party’s 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, described it as a “great idea”.

If he were to make the move, he would be just the second former president to do so. William Howard Taft was the 27th president before serving as the 10th chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1921.

Mr Obama has previously questioned whether he had the required temperament.

“When I got out of law school, I chose not to clerk,” he told The New Yorker in 2014.

“Partly because I was an older student, but partly because I don’t think I have the temperament to sit in a chamber and write opinions.”

He added: “I love the law, intellectually I love nutting out these problems, wrestling with these arguments. I love teaching. I miss the classroom and engaging with students.

“But I think being a justice is a little bit too monastic for me. Particularly after having spent six years and what will be eight years in this bubble, I think I need to get outside a little bit more.”