Dershowitz: Biden made 'serious error' by limiting search for SCOTUS nominee to black women

Renowned civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz says President Joe Biden "made a serious error" by choosing to limit his search for the next Supreme Court justice to black women candidates exclusively.

Dershowitz criticized Biden's pledge to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer with an African American female in an interview on the new "Just the News" television show on the Real America's Voice network.

Dershowitz, who has known Biden for years and voted for him in 2020, said he would welcome a black woman as a candidate, but he does not think race or gender should be a qualification.

"I think it's wonderful if the most qualified person and maybe she is is a black woman, that's great," he said. "That would add diversity to the court. I would welcome that enthusiastically. 

"But to say to every person who's not a black woman, 'No, I'm sorry, you're not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, at least not in this appointment' … That just is not the American way. I don't think it's fair." 

"I think he made a serious error here in announcing that he was going to limit" the nomination search to black women, the Harvard professor emeritus said.

If Biden "had said he was going to restrict it to a Muslim because no Muslim has ever been appointed, it would be unconstitutional," Dershowitz explained. He cited Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which states "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification" for public office.

Under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Nineteenth Amendment, Dershowitz argued, "you cannot use race and gender as a disqualifying factor in appointing people to the Supreme Court."

The Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship to everyone born in the United States and established equal protection for all U.S. citizens. The Nineteenth Amendment protected a woman's right to vote.

Dershowitz claimed President Ronald Reagan and President Donald Trump made similar, albeit less specific, announcements suggesting a gender eligibility test when nominating female judges to the high court. 

Dershowitz said he thinks the president "believes in the U.S. Constitution," but he insisted "three constitutional wrongs do not a constitutional right make."

"Anybody who announces in advance gender or race or anything like that is violating the spirit of Article VI and amendments fourteen and nineteen," Dershowitz stated.

Dershowitz warned about "identity politics" in the "justice system" in November on the "Just the News" podcast. "Everything is about race or politics," he said at the time.

Dershowitz on Tuesday also told "Just the News" that by failing to disclose vital evidence, prosecutors in the first Trump impeachment committed a "serious constitutional violation."