WASHINGTON: India-born Preeta Bansal, a Harvard-educated lawyer who was part of Barack Obama's dazzling team of advisers during his election campaign, is being seen as a potential candidate for the office of the Solicitor General, a post yet to be filled by a woman in US.
42-year-old Bansal, who has advised the President-elect on foreign policy and judiciary matters, is among possible appointees to the post, 'The Am Law Daily' reported citing some unnamed advisers of the Obama campaign.
"The Solicitor General is the only position where the statute requires that the officer be learned in the law," it quoted O'Melveny and Myers's Walter Dellinger as saying.
Bansal, a product of Harvard Law School and a partner at the international law firm of Skadden Arps, has earlier served as the New York state Solicitor General.
Dellinger said that for the post, experience as a state Solicitor General would be valuable, as would be a record of advocacy before the court, the report said.
Morrison and Foerster partner Beth Brinkmann and Harvard Law school dean and professor Elena Kagan's names have also been attached to the post, which has never been filled by a woman, the report in the daily's online edition said.
Other possibilities, according to 'Legal Times', include Stanford Law School professors Kathleen Sullivan and Pamela Karlan, as well as MetLife litigation counsel Teresa Wynn Roseborough.
Bansal, a member of what an Obama lawyer playfully calls the 'Harvard Law School mafia', was part of Bill Clinton's White House and Justice Department in 1993-96. She was also the first Indian-American to head the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
