Litigation

The Kagan nomination, May 18

By Ted Frank

• FrumForum's John Vecchione and Eugene Volokh independently discuss the merits of fighting the Kagan nomination starting from opposite positions, and generally come to the same conclusion.
• Similar to Volokh's reasoning, Bainbridge calls Kagan a conservative win, considering the politically feasible alternatives. I don't know that I'd go that far: Kagan is better for conservatives than Koh (though Koh would present a much tougher vote for swing-state Democrats given his radicalism, and in that sense might well have turned out to be a conservative win if Senate Democrats rebelled in a much clearer battle of what was at stake on the Court), but I think that the alternative universe where Wood got the nomination turns out somewhat better for conservatives in the long run. I never got anyone on the right to agree with me on that proposition, though. [Bainbridge]
• The Federalist Society's SCOTUSReport upgrades further with an impressive multimedia page and a list of resources that includes every senator's statement on the nomination, transcripts of Kagan's arguments, as well as materials from Kagan's earlier solicitor general hearings.
• Kagan took a far-left position on the Fourteenth Amendment in a memo on the DeShaney case when she clerked for Justice Marshall—but, of course, so did Justice Marshall, and it was 23 years ago. [WSJ; Whelan @ Bench Memos]
• Harvard's double-standard on gay rights. [Wehner @ Commentary]
• Kagan's childhood neighborhood was the bastion of Bella Abzug. [Forward]
• You won't learn much from the basic questions in the Senate questionnaire. [BLP]
• Crovitz on Kagan's confirmation-hearing law-review article calling the process a "charade." [W$J]
• But if you're looking for drama at Kagan's confirmation hearings, a Craigslist suitor of Kagan asks her to send a coded message in her opening statement. Shockingly, there does not appear to be a media frenzy over this, even as Andrew Sullivan backslides on his promise to drop his monomania over Kagan's personal life. [Above The Law; Craigslist]

Full post as published by Point of Law on May 18, 2010 (boomark / email).