Thread: Obama to Name Kagan for Supreme Court

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/

We posted at the same time! I deleted my post. Now want to go find out which way she leans...


NBC: Obama to name Kagan for high court
U.S. solicitor general would be 4th woman in history to serve as a justice
Image: Elena Kagan
Jose Luis Magana / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Elena Kagan, currently the United States solicitor general, served as Dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009.
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NBC News
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NBC News and news services
updated 4 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will nominate U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, NBC News’ Pete Williams reported late Sunday night.

Kagan, 50, served as the Dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009. Obama nominated her to serve in her current post as solicitor general early in 2009, and she won Senate confirmation by a vote of 61-31. She is the first woman to serve as solicitor general of the United States.

She was widely viewed as a front-runner when Obama was considering candidates for a Supreme Court opening last year, but the president ultimately chose Sonia Sotomayor for the job.
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Some liberal critics have said that Kagan's views on executive power and the treatment of terrorist detainees are too conservative.

If confirmed, Kagan would will the vacancy left by retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Stevens, 90, announced his decision to retire on April 9 after nearly 35 years of service on the high court. Kagan would also be the third sitting woman on the court, joining Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, and the fourth woman in history to be a Supreme Court Justice.

Kagan has served as a White House adviser during Bill Clinton's presidency and a Harvard Law School dean but never as a judge.


Elena Kagan biography
Name: Elena Kagan

Vital stats: Born in New York, member of the Democratic Party, Jewish, graduate of Harvard Law School, Oxford University, and Princeton University.

Career highlights: Solicitor general, Department of Justice, 2009-present; Member, Research Advisory Council at the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute, 2005-2008; Dean, Harvard Law School, 2003-2009; Deputy assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy, 1997-1999; Associate counsel to President Clinton, 1995-1996; Special counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden, 1993; Law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court, 1987-1988; Staff member, Dukakis for President Campaign, 1988.

Solicitors general who joined the high court: William Howard Taft, Stanley Reed, Robert Jackson, and Thurgood Marshall.
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Kagan's appointment would buck a four-decade trend if she is confirmed by the Senate because all justices in recent decades have been judges. The last two justices who had not been judges, William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell, joined the Supreme Court in 1972.

Her nomination is unlikely to cause a damaging fight in the Senate ahead of congressional mid-term elections in November or distract the Obama administration from other issues like jobs, financial regulation and climate change leglislation.

But Kagan could still have to deal with vigorous questioning by Republicans during her Senate confirmation on hot-button issues like her opposition to on-campus military recruiting at Harvard because of U.S. policy barring gays from serving openly in the military.

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First Read: Elena Kagan's background

Kagan would not be expected to change the court's basic ideological balance. Like Stevens, she would probably side in most cases with the three other liberal justices on the court, which is controlled by a five-member conservative majority.


Praise from conservatives
In the Senate vote to confirm her as solicitor general, she got seven Republican votes, including votes from conservatives Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona.

"She is a superb lawyer and an awesomely intelligent person. In discussion with students and in conference and dispute with colleagues she has a deftness, a quickness and an aptness of phrase -- with no tincture at all of pomposity or self-importance -- that show she will be able to argue to the Court with consummate skill ... She is a wonderful person, direct, honest, and fearless." -- Charles Fried, Harvard Law School professor who served as solicitor general from 1985 to 1989 under President Reagan.

"Her success at Harvard resulted from her shrewd ability to bridge disagreement ... It might seem over the top to say that Kagan combines principles, pragmatism and good judgment better than anyone I have ever met. But it is true." –- Jack Goldsmith, Harvard Law School professor who served as assistant attorney general in the Bush administration.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36967616/ns ... eme_court/

quote(She is a superb lawyer and an awesomely intelligent person.)

Aren't they always.

I have read enough....

Who is Elena Kagan, apart from Obama’s likely nominee?
Yes, it was 30 years ago, but always fun to read, even through the prism of time.

[b]Elena Kagan’s senior thesis while an undergraduate at Princeton, entitled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933″

“In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?â€

SCOTUS fight: Boxing Elena
By Michelle Malkin • May 9, 2010 11:03 PM

Monday opens with a SCOTUS bang. NBC News reports tonight that Harvard Law School dean turned solicitor general Elena Kagan will be the White House SCOTUS nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. It was widely rumored she would be the pick leading into the weekend. The announcement is expected at 11 a.m. Eastern:

President Barack Obama will nominate U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, NBC News’ Pete Williams reported late Sunday night.

Kagan, 50, served as the Dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009. Obama nominated her to serve in her current post as solicitor general early in 2009, and she won Senate confirmation by a vote of 61-31. She is the first woman to serve as solicitor general of the United States.

She was widely viewed as a front-runner when Obama was considering candidates for a Supreme Court opening last year, but the president ultimately chose Sonia Sotomayor for the job.

The Beltway conventional wisdom has already cast her as a “mooooderateâ€