A LOOK AT POSSIBLE SUPREME COURT CANDIDATES : Amalya L. Kearse

Moderate Republican

U.S. appeals court judge

Amalya L. Kearse, 54, a black woman and moderate Republican, was appointed to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. She was the first woman and second black to join that court. (The first was Thurgood Marshall.)

Kearse’s name has come up before as a possible Supreme Court appointee. More than a decade ago, she was one of eight candidates promoted by the National Women’s Political Caucus when political pressure for a woman on the court began in earnest.

During her tenure on the appeals court, Kearse filed a scathing dissent in a case that recently became one of the more controversial abortion rulings by the Supreme Court: the issue of whether the federal government may prohibit federally funded family planning clinics from dispensing information about abortion.

The New York federal appeals court upheld the regulation, which was affirmed earlier this year by the high court.

In heatedly disagreeing with her judicial colleagues on the issue, Kearse wrote: “By prohibiting the delivery of abortion information and prohibiting communication even as to where such information can be obtained, the present regulations deny a woman her constitutionally protected right to choose. She cannot make an informed choice between two options when she cannot obtain information as to one of them.”

In a 1984 opinion, she wrote for the majority in a 2-1 decision that said prosecutors could not systematically exclude people from juries solely because of their race. It was the first time that a federal appellate court had invalidated such use of peremptory challenges and a precursor to a similar ruling by the high court in 1986.

Before being named to the appeals court, Kearse was a partner with the Wall Street law firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed, which she joined after graduation from the University of Michigan Law School in 1962.

She is a native of Vauxhall, N.J. Her father was a postmaster, and her mother was a doctor and later an anti-poverty administrator.