Litigation

The Kagan nomination, May 17

By Ted Frank

• "This notion that [Justice Kennedy] can be led around by the nose by some clever person seems to me wildly off the mark." [Geoff Stone, quoted by Liptak @ NYT]
• Miguel Estrada, Ken Starr, and Michael McConnell endorse Kagan. [AP/WaPo]
• John Yoo doesn't. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• Senator Sessions predicts bumpy ride. [Reuters; WaPo]
• Orin Kerr to advise Senator Cornyn on process. [Politico; Volokh]
• The New York Times characterizes Kagan's support of free speech as "conservative." Conservatives might disagree, since Kagan took the position that the government could constitutionally ban books under McCain-Feingold, but it's interesting that, in three decades, the "liberal" and "conservative" stereotypes have switched places. [NYT]
• White House asks for release of Kagan's White House papers. She's the first nominee who has an email paper trail. [AP]
• Kremlinologists including POL favorite Randy Maniloff try to divine Kagan's opinions on insurance law. [PhillyDeal$]
• Other Kremlinologists try to divine Kagan's role on the Court from her six Supreme Court arguments. [AP; Mauro @ law.com]
• Stephen Carter's Kremlinology. [NYT]
• Still others attempt to extrapolate from the Solicitor General's office choosing to defend a USDA regulatory decision on behalf of Monsanto against a bad Ninth Circuit decision. The article reflects precisely zero understanding of what the solicitor general is supposed to do. [Truthout]
• "Which 'recently appointed' justice does Kagan have a beef with?" [Yahoo Newsroom]
• Annotated guide to legal blogosphere commentary ignores Point of Law, but has lots of other links. [Conglomerate]
• I'm not going to link to the racist site, which you can find on Google, but I'm accused of being part of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the Court through the Kagan nomination. So keep that in mind as you read my posts.
• I don't think you can tell much about a person by what they wrote when they were twenty, but if you think otherwise, here's Kagan's Princeton thesis on radicalism, at least until Princeton issues another copyright claim. [Infidels; DeLong; Newsweek; Media Matters spin (via Playbook)]. Playbook points out that Chief Justice Roberts wrote about Bolshevism and Marxism in his senior thesis.

Full post as published by Point of Law on May 17, 2010 (boomark / email).