Litigation

Senate Committee to Vote on Kagan July 20

By Peter Hardin

The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed until July 20 a vote on whether to confirm U.S. Solicitor General Elena to the Supreme Court.

The panel agreed Tuesday to a request by the committee’s senior Republican, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, for the one-week delay, which is permitted by committee rules and is customary in such high-profile cases.

Sessions voiced concerns about Kagan’s nomination, according to a Wall Street Journal article. “Fundamentally, the nominee lacks the experience and the intellectual rigor that you develop from full-time practice of the law or from serving as a judge,” Sessions said. “She’s had neither of those experiences and I think it shows from her testimony.”

Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., disagreed.  ?I will cast my vote in support of Solicitor General Kagan?s nomination,? Leahy was quoted by Bloomberg as saying. ?I believe she will ably fill the seat occupied for decades by Justice [John Paul] Stevens with dignity and honor.?

Some activists urged her to step aside, if confirmed, from hearing a legal challenge that states have submitted to the federal government’s health-care overhaul. A Wall Street Journal editorial also took that tack, saying it was likely she expressed an opinion on the litigation as a senior Justice Department official.

Meanwhile the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law refrained from taking a stand on Kagan’s nomination, although it endorsed then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the high court last year, the Associated Press reported. The group is a partner of Justice at Stake.

The Lawyers’ Committee issued a report examining Kagan’s record on civil rights, and executive director Barbara Arnwine said in a statement that key questions remained unanswered:

“Solicitor General Kagan has an accomplished background and we applaud the President’s nomination of such a qualified woman to the Supreme Court.

“However, key questions remain regarding her civil rights record that we had hoped would be answered during the confirmation hearings, but were not completely.  Because the Lawyers’ Committee’s standard is based not only on a nominee’s legal competency and qualifications for the Supreme Court, but also upon the nominee’s civil rights record, we cannot take a position on General Kagan’s nomination as we did Justice Sotomayor.”

Justice at Stake covered the Kagan hearings on Twitter, and you can check out the Twitter reports by clicking on http://twitter.com/justicestake. You also can learn more about Kagan from Gavel Grab and from the JAS Replacing Justice Stevens page.

Full post as published by The Gavel on July 13, 2010 (boomark / email).