Elena Kagan is Obama's pick for the Supreme Court

truth

how bout a staunch constitutionalist/libertarian? we've already got enough 'liberals' and 'conservatives' mucking things up throughout our govt.

She's not a lesbian - she's jewish.

I never said she was a lesbian.
Your comment is hilarious though, what are you telling me Jews cannot be lesbians?

I'm HOPING she's a lesbian, and as far as abortion goes, she's already said that she will uphold legal precedence -- meaning she'll be pro-choice.

"During her confirmation for solicitor general, Ms. Kagan said she would respect laws and precedent regarding abortion rights." -- New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/10/us/politics/20100505-kagan-opinion...

Isn't Maddow Jewish AND a lesbian?

I thought I heard she was Jewish, anyway...

please post a picture of yourself and let the rest of us decide if you meet the aesthetic requirements to be allowed to post on Current...for real now, let us judge you in the same manner that you have Judged her.

PART TWO...

Kagan was born in April 1960 and grew up in a Jewish household in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She went on to Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She served as a law clerk for well-known liberal federal judge Abner Mikva and then for liberal Thurgood Marshall on the high court.

In her 1986 job application to Marshall, she rather matter-of-factly told the civil rights pioneer, "I would be honored to serve as your clerk." The nation's first African-American justice affectionately called the diminutive Kagan "Shorty."

Kagan later went into teaching, starting at the University of Chicago, where one of the part-time faculty was Obama. Also teaching at the time was Diane Wood, who later became a federal judge and also is a finalist for the current high court vacancy. Kagan and Wood were among the few women on the full-time faculty at that time.

President Clinton later named Kagan associate White House counsel and then appointed her to the influential Domestic Policy Council, where she earned a reputation for articulate and well-reasoned statements on tricky political issues. She was the administration's point person on passing anti-tobacco legislation, negotiating in 1998 with Republican Sen. John McCain to give the federal government the authority to control cigarettes, as it does pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

The president picked her in 1999 for the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. But no Senate confirmation hearings were held, and the nomination lapsed. The seat was later filled by John Roberts, who quickly used the appointment as a springboard to chief justice.

Named Harvard's dean in 2003, Kagan earned a reputation for soothing longstanding tensions over a perceived liberal tilt to the faculty and curriculum.

She began pushing for the appointment of conservative professors, including Jack Goldsmith, a onetime lawyer in President George W. Bush's Justice Department. Goldsmith was noted for privately expressing concern over the so-called Bybee Memo, or torture memos, that offered executive branch endorsement for harsh interrogation techniques by the CIA against suspected high-level terror suspects.

Such hires eased ideological unrest on the Harvard campus.

"I have no doubt her heart beats on the left," said Charles Fried, a Harvard colleague of Kagan's who also was a solicitor general under President Reagan. But he said Kagan saw her role as dean to foster understanding, and "she would do it by recruiting excellent teachers from across the ideological spectrum."

Fried, who himself was considered for the high court under several Republican presidents, has nothing but praise for Kagan's skill as a lawyer and administrator.
But she has drawn criticism, too, from conservatives over her strong efforts to try to block military recruiters from Harvard because of the current "don't ask, don't tell" policy on removing openly homosexual service members. Kagan supported other schools challenging a federal law requiring that recruiters be given equal access or face the loss of federal funding. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law in 2006.

CONTINUED...

PART THREE...

Just four months after taking the job as dean, in October 2003, Kagan told students in a campuswide e-mail, "This action causes me deep distress. I abhor the military's discriminatory recruitment policy." She called it "a profound wrong -- a moral injustice of the first order."

"I was at Harvard Law School when Elena Kagan became dean, and the liberals have no need to fear. She is one of them," said Carrie Severino, senior counsel at the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal group.

As the recruiting controversy showed, Severino said, "She is not a conservative."
Nor is she really very liberal, say some progressive groups, and that worries many on the left.

Her views on executive authority in particular have raised some eyebrows. As chief defender of the administration's anti-terrorism strategy, Kagan has articulated a more robust defense of the White House than many civil rights and human rights groups would like.

"There's a real concern about Solicitor General Kagan with respect to national security issues," said Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has defended dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "We do know from how she addressed the issue at her confirmation proceedings, and I certainly can't see anything that would lead me to believe that she would have a less expansive version of what executive power is than certainly the current form, and certainly with respect to how George W. Bush viewed it. So I think there's a real concern for human rights groups."

Warren's group wonders whether as a justice, Kagan "might go with what the Obama administration and what the Bush administration had put in play rather than seriously challenging that."

Her supporters counter with a 2001 law review article in which Kagan articulated, in a pre-September 11 environment, the consequences of the "unitary executive" theory that was promoted in the Clinton administration where she worked and later enthusiastically embraced by the Bush administration.

Kagan concluded, "President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions."

And many progressive groups say they have been quietly assured by the White House of its confidence that Kagan will be a "reliable" liberal voice on the divided Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a slim, shaky majority on a range of hot-button issues.
Kagan would be a liberal replacing a liberal and unlikely to immediately move the court to the left. Nevertheless, many on the right worry what a Justice Kagan would bring to the court.

"While she ... has at least acknowledged some role for executive power that a lot of liberals were trying to hide all together in this current administration, I think the conservatives should find that troubling," Severino said. "Because the president has been appointing 'czars' [to deal with the health care and financial bailouts] that have uncertain constitutional merit. I think that actually should raise concerns with conservatives."

Going before the court
Kagan had never argued a case in person before an appeals court before she took over as solicitor general. Now she has argued six cases herself before the justices, and supervised other cases where the federal government was a party. Despite her lack of experience, she appears to be pretty well accepted by the often skeptical court, displaying equal amounts mastery of often-dense legal language and a brisk, conversational style that reflects a confidence in her abilities to articulate the administration's positions.

One member of the court has repeatedly questioned Kagan's reasoning. Chief Justice Roberts last month labeled as "absolutely startling" the solicitor general's argument that a when one federal prosecutor drops criminal charges, another prosecutor need not do the same.

"The different U.S. attorneys all work for your boss, right?" Roberts asked. "They work for the attorney general," and his final decision holds.

"The United States government is a complicated place," Kagan replied, not willing to back down, arguing that various individual offices should be allowed discretion to decide such matters as they fit.

The first case she argued before the court was a blockbuster: whether to open federal campaign spending to corporations -- businesses, unions and advocacy groups -- seeking a greater voice in the crowded political debate, mainly through ads.

Roberts seemed concerned that Kagan appeared to abandon at argument a key point made earlier by the administration: that current campaign spending limits are necessary to ensure that corporate speech does not overwhelm the voices of individual voters.

"We do not rely at all on that," Kagan noted.

Roberts pounced. "You are asking us to uphold [past precedent on spending limits] on the basis of two arguments, two principles, two compelling interests we have never accepted in the expenditure context."

"Fair enough," Kagan brusquely acknowledged.

The court ruled in favor of expanding spending power for corporations, and Roberts noted Kagan's mixed messages. "To the extent that the government's case for reaffirming [precedent] depends on radically reconceptionalizing its reasoning, that argument is at odds with itself."

In a separate argument, Kagan tried to turn the tables, posing a question to Justice Antonin Scalia. "Well, I'm not making the argument," said the usually verbose justice.
Roberts was more blunt. "Usually, we have the questions the other way," he said sternly.

"I apologize," Kagan said.

But her appearances have not always been tense. In January, Kagan stumbled when addressing Scalia. "Mr. Chief Justice -- excuse me, Justice Scalia -- I didn't mean to promote you so quickly," she said.

Replied Scalia to Kagan, "I'm sure you didn't," bringing huge laughter in the courtroom.
"Thanks for thinking it was a promotion," said Roberts, the real chief justice, this time smiling.

CNN's Bill Mears, John King and Ed Henry contributed to this report.

And it's been a close one, all along I thought Rush Limbaugh was going to when the coveted title.....

But NO it's Miss Kagen taking the crown of top Jabba the Hutt impersonator.....

Somewhere along with me, Mr. George Lucas is shedding a tear....

You love to be crass. Don't lie.

What a waste of life & living, you are.

Utterly pointless... and rather childish, to boot.

Jabba or Rush?

Aw you guys just love me don't you? What's it like to be so uptight all the time?

randall: That's pretty aggressive, mate. You're wishing death upon someone over a joke? Grow up, son.

I wished death on no one. You called her an ugly man. That's so petty. So you're a waste of life!

With all the negatives on these comments defending Kagan, I'd say we have a surge of haters on our hands!

PART TWO...

The New York Times

With all signs pointing to a Kagan nomination, critics have been pre-emptively attacking her in the days leading up to the president’s announcement. Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, writing on The Daily Beast, compared her to Harriet E. Miers, whose nomination by President George W. Bush collapsed amid an uprising among conservatives who considered her unqualified and not demonstrably committed to their judicial philosophy.

M. Edward Whelan III, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, wrote on National Review’s Web site that even Ms. Kagan’s nonjudicial experience was inadequate. “Kagan may well have less experience relevant to the work of being a justice than any entering justice in decades,” Mr. Whelan wrote.

Ms. Kagan defended her experience during confirmation hearings as solicitor general last year. “I bring up a lifetime of learning and study of the law, and particularly of the constitutional and administrative law issues that form the core of the court’s docket,” she testified. “I think I bring up some of the communications skills that has made me — I’m just going to say it — a famously excellent teacher.”

Ms. Kagan was one of Mr. Obama’s runners-up last year when he nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the court, and she was always considered the front-runner this year. The president also interviewed three other candidates, all federal appeals court judges: Merrick B. Garland of Washington, Diane P. Wood of Chicago and Sidney R. Thomas of Montana.

Ms. Kagan had several advantages from the beginning that made her the most obvious choice. For one, she works for Mr. Obama, who has been impressed with her intelligence and legal capacity, aides said, and she worked for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he was a senator. For another, she is the youngest of the four finalists, meaning she would most likely have the longest tenure as a justice.

Ms. Kagan was also confirmed by the Senate just last year, albeit with 31 no votes, making it harder for Republicans who voted for her in 2009 to vote against her in 2010.

The president can also say he reached beyond the so-called “judicial monastery,” although picking a solicitor general and former Harvard law dean hardly reaches outside the Ivy League, East Coast legal elite. And her confirmation would allow Mr. Obama to build on his appointment of Justice Sotomayor by bringing the number of women on the court to its highest ever (three, with Justice Sotomayor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg).

Moreover, in his selection of finalists, Mr. Obama effectively framed the choice so that he could seemingly take the middle road by picking Ms. Kagan, who correctly or not was viewed as ideologically between Judge Wood on the left and Judge Garland in the center.

Judge Garland was widely seen as the most likely alternative to Ms. Kagan and the one most likely to win easy confirmation. Well respected on both sides of the aisle, he had a number of conservatives publicly calling him the best they could hope for from a Democratic president. Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, privately made clear to the president that he considered Judge Garland a good choice, according to people briefed on their conversations.

But Mr. Obama ultimately opted to save Judge Garland for when he faces a more hostile Senate and needs a nominee with more Republican support. Democrats expect to lose seats in this fall’s election, so if another Supreme Court seat comes open next year and Mr. Obama has a substantially thinner margin in the Senate than he has today, Judge Garland would be an obvious choice.

As for Ms. Kagan, strategists on both sides anticipate a fight over her confirmation but not an all-out war. The White House hopes the Senate Judiciary Committee can hold hearings before July 4, but some Congressional aides were skeptical. Either way, Democrats want Ms. Kagan confirmed by the August recess so she can join the court for the start of its new term in October.

A New Yorker who grew up in Manhattan, Ms. Kagan earned degrees from Princeton, Oxford and Harvard Law School, worked briefly in private practice, clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, served as a Senate staff member and worked as a White House lawyer and domestic policy aide under President Bill Clinton. She was nominated for an appeals court judgeship in 1999, but the Senate never voted on her nomination.

She has been a trailblazer along the way, not only as the first woman to run Harvard Law School but also as the first woman to serve as solicitor general. Her inexperience as a judge makes her a rarity in modern times, but until the 1970s many Supreme Court justices came from outside the judiciary, including senators, governors, cabinet secretaries and even a former president.

If the Senate confirms Ms. Kagan, who is Jewish, the Supreme Court for the first time will have no Protestant members. In that case, the court would be composed of six justices who are Catholic and three who are Jewish.

Like her former boss, Justice Marshall, who was the last solicitor general to go directly to the Supreme Court, Ms. Kagan may be forced to recuse herself during her early time on the bench because of her participation in a number of cases coming before the justices. Tom Goldstein, publisher of ScotusBlog, a Web site that follows the court, estimated that she would have to sit out on 13 to 15 matters. Mr. Whelan argued that it would be significantly more than that.