Story highlights Vice President Joe Biden was instrumental in blocking Jeff Sessions for a judgeship in the 1980s

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(CNN) In 1986, then-Sen. Joe Biden declared he couldn't support Jeff Sessions as a federal judge, determining the US attorney's alleged racist remarks were disqualifying.

Now, the outgoing vice president is willing to give Sessions -- a former Senate colleague and President-elect Donald Trump's choice to become attorney general -- a second chance.

"I wouldn't have appointed Jeff, but people learn," Biden said during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. "People change."

Acting as the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden was instrumental in scuttling Sessions' nomination for the federal bench three decades ago. He told Tapper he "led the fight against him."

After the committee heard testimony alleging Sessions made racist remarks and called the NAACP "un-American," Biden publicly urged then-President Ronald Reagan to withdraw the nomination.

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