Legal Commentary

Obama to Nominate Elena Kagan for Supreme Court

By Jeralyn

President Obama will name U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan today to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Stevens.

A New Yorker who grew up in Manhattan, Ms. Kagan earned degrees from Princeton, Oxford and Harvard Law School, worked briefly in private practice, clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, served as a Senate staff member and worked as a White House lawyer and domestic policy aide under President Bill Clinton.

Considering the most likely alternative was Judge Merrick Garland, formerly a top DOJ prosecutor, I'm glad. I think we dodged another Alito and Roberts bullet. Her only past job that gives me pause: She was a special counsel to Joe Biden when he served on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the early 90's. [More...]

It was 1994 that Biden created his awful Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. It was a terrible bill in so many ways, not the least was the creation of many new death penalty offenses. But according to her questionnaire she submitted for the Solicitor General job, she only held that position in the summer of 1993, and it sounds like she mostly worked on getting Justice Ginsburg confirmed, so maybe she didn't have a lot to do with it.

Obama was never going to nominate a liberal for the court. And there are some who say liberals' complaints about her are overstated.

Her job as Solicitor General was to argue the side of the Administration. It doesn't mean those positions were her personal beliefs. Based on her choice of jobs over her career, she may be more liberal than she's being credit for. I hope so.

Update: Scotus Blog has 9,750 words on Kagan's record.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 10, 2010 (boomark / email).