Senate confirms Chandigarh-born as top US judge

Chandigarh-born Indian-American legal luminary Srikanth 'Sri' Srinivasan made history Thursday as the US Senate confirmed his nomination as a top US judge in a 97 to 0 vote.

Srinivasan, 46, currently principal deputy solicitor general of the US, would be the first judge of South Asian descent on the powerful appeals court for the American capital, often called the nation's second-highest court.

He was expected to win confirmation as President Barack Obama's nominee to sit on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, by a wide margin as the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Srinivasan by a vote of 18 to 0.

Srinivasan last August succeeded another Indian American, Neal Kumar Katyal, in his current job.

Born in Chandigarh, Srinivasan immigrated to the US at the age of four. His family settled in Lawrence, Kansas, where his father was a mathematics professor at the University of Kansas, and his mother taught at the Kansas City Art Institute.

He received his BA with honours and distinction in 1989 from Stanford University and his JD 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.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)