Indian-American legal luminary Srikanth “Sri” Srinivasan has been sworn in as a judge of the US Courts of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit, regarded as the second most powerful court in America after the Supreme Court.
No Indian-American has risen to such judicial heights in the US as the 46-year-old Srinivasan, who was handpicked by President Barack Obama, calling him a “trail-blazer”. The US Senate unanimously confirmed his nomination in May, with a 97-0 vote.
As Srinivasan placed his hand on a copy of the Gita, held by his mother, and was administered the oath by former Supreme Court judge Sandra Day O’Connor, the ceremony was watched among others by Gursharan Kaur, wife of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, now visiting the US. O’Connor, for whom Srinivasan had once clerked, called him “fair, faultless and fabulous”.
While nominating the Chandigarh-born and Kansas-raised Srinivasan, Obama had described him as “a trailblazer who personifies the best of America” and one would would now “serve with distinction on the federal bench”. Srinivasan, who last held the post Principal Deputy Solicitor-General of the United States, received his B.A. with honours and distinction in 1989 from Stanford University and his J.D. with distinction in 1995 from Stanford law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as an editor of the Stanford law Review. He also holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which he received along with his J.D. in 1995.
Hailing from Tamil Nadu, Srinivasan’s began his legal career by serving as a law clerk for Judge J Harvie Wilkinson on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1995 to 1996, Srinivasan spent a year as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General before clerking for Justice O’Connor during 1997-98.