Report: Obama to Name Kagan for Supreme Coury


President Barack Obama is to nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his pick to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, NBC News reported Sunday.

Kagan would be the fourth woman ever nominated to the high court and continue a trend of Ivy League-educated lawyers who sit on the bench, after having graduated from Princeton University, Oxford University and Harvard Law School.

Unlike the others she would join on the bench, Kagan has never before served as a federal judge.

Earlier Attorney General Eric Holder, who is Kagan's boss at the Justice Department, did little to dispel the notion that Kagan was the leading choice.

"She's done a wonderful job in the Justice Department. I've known her since the Clinton years. And I think she would be a great justice," Holder said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

He cited her credentials as solicitor general and the first woman to ever hold that post, as well as the position of Harvard Law School dean.

"I think people will get an understanding of who she is, what her judicial philosophy is, if in fact she is the pick," Holder said.

Kagan just celebrated her 50th birthday, and her relative youth is seen as a plus for the lifetime appointment. She has interviewed separately with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and was a finalist for the 2009 opening that was filled by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Last year, the Senate confirmed Kagan's appointment as solicitor general with relative ease. It was well-known at the time that Obama might eventually send her name to Capitol Hill again.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05 ... eme-court/