President Barack Obama has nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, saying she will demonstrate independence, integrity, and passion for the law. If confirmed by the Senate, Kagan will become the third woman on the high court. Obama introduced her Monday in the White House's East Room. He called her "my friend" and one of the nation's foremost legal minds.
But lets get some information on the Solicitor General, Elena Kagan...
POSITION: Supreme Court nominee
NOMINEE: Elena Kagan
Born: April 28, 1960
Occupation: Dean of Harvard Law School and Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law at Harvard University.
Education: BA summa cum laude, Princeton University, 1981; MPhil, Worchester College, Oxford, 1983; JD magna cum laude, Harvard Law School, 1986
Clinton White House: 1995-1996 associate counsel to the President; 1997-1999 deputy assistant to the President for Domestic Policy; 1997-1999 deputy director Domestic Policy Council.
From 1986 to 1987 Ms. Dean Kagan served as a judicial clerk for Judge Abner Mikva on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. From 1987-1988 she also served as a judicial clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Dean Kagan briefly served as a staff member for Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign. During the summer of 1993 she served as Special Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee to work on the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Hate Crimes
Believes courts should support hate crime laws and that when reviewing regulations of speech, courts could "evaluate motive directly, they could remove the lion's share of the First Amendment's doctrinal clutter." Elena Kagan, Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Government Motive in First Amendment Doctrine, 63 U. Chi. L. Rev. 413, 516 (1996).
"In her 1993 University of Chicago Law Review piece, she wrote that proposed regulations on hate speech and pornography failed to adhere to the fundamental First Amendment principle of viewpoint neutrality — that the government cannot favor certain private speakers or viewpoints over others. Her 1996 article on government motive in First Amendment cases has been cited more than 115 times — an enviably high number for a secondary source. In that article she declares that "the application of First Amendment law is best understood and most readily explained as a kind of motive-hunting." David Hudson, Jr., "Solicitor-general nominee: impressive First Amendment resume," FirstAmendmentcenter.org.
On Opposing Religious Institutions Involving Themselves In Pregnancy
"As a young law clerk, Kagan, 49, once penned a memo saying it would be difficult for a religious organization to take government funding to counsel teenagers about pregnancy 'without injecting some kind of religious teaching.' When a Senator asked her about the memo, Kagan did not hesitate to distance herself from its views, saying she had fresh eyes two decades later. 'I looked at it, and I thought, That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard,' she said." Michael Sherer, "Solicitor General Elena Kagan," Time, April 13, 2010.
On Questioning of Presidential Nominees
"Kagan herself has called for the Senate to use confirmation hearings "to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues." In her 1995 review (62 U. Chi. L. Rev. 919) of Stephen L. Carter's The Confirmation Mess, Kagan argues that the "critical inquiry" that the Senate should conduct on a Supreme Court nominee "concerns the votes she would cast, the perspective she would add (or augment), and the direction in which she would move the institution." Kagan draws as "the fundamental lesson of the Bork hearings … the essential rightness—the legitimacy and the desirability—of exploring a Supreme Court nominee's set of constitutional views and commitments."
Although Carter's book and Kagan's review focus heavily on Supreme Court nominees, they also address DOJ nominations (especially Clinton's 1993 nomination, subsequently withdrawn, of Lani Guinier to be AAG for Civil Rights), and Kagan's view of the Senate's role applies fully to those (and other executive-branch) nominations. That, of course, is hardly surprising, as the case for careful scrutiny of the legal views of DOJ nominees, even if combined with greater deference to the president, seems widely accepted." Ed Whelan, "Obama's SG Pick Elena Kagan," NRO's The Corner, January 7, 2009.
On Lack of Experience
"Kagan may well have less experience relevant to the work of being a justice than any justice in the last five decades or more. In addition to zero judicial experience, she has only a few years of real-world legal experience. Further, notwithstanding all her years in academia, she has only a scant record of legal scholarship. Kagan flunks her own 'threshold' test of the minimal qualifications needed for a Supreme Court nominee." Ed Whelan, "Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan," NRO's Bench Memos, May 10, 2010.
On Being a Washington and Obama Administration Insider
"There is a striking mismatch between the White House's populist rhetoric about seeking a justice with a "keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people" and the reality of the Kagan pick. Kagan is the consummate Obama insider, and her meteoric rise over the last 15 years—from obscure academic and Clinton White House staffer to Harvard law school dean to Supreme Court nominee—would seem to reflect what writer Christopher Caldwell describes as the "intermarriage of financial and executive branch elites [that] could only have happened in the Clinton years" and that has fostered the dominant financial-political oligarchy in America. In this regard, Kagan's paid role as a Goldman Sachs adviser is the perfect marker of her status in the oligarchy—and of her unfathomable remoteness from ordinary Americans." Ed Whelan, "Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan," NRO's Bench Memos, May 10, 2010.
Opposition by Liberals
"Liberal legal scholars and experts stepped up their attacks Friday on Elena Kagan as a potential Supreme Court nominee, hoping to dissuade President Obama from selecting her in the last few days before an expected announcement early next week. A group of four law professors Friday morning published a piece at Salon.com criticizing Kagan, Obama's solicitor general, for hiring too few women and minorities when she was dean of Harvard law school. Liberal attorney and blogger Glenn Greenwald — who has taken Kagan to task for her views on executive power and been the chief organizing force behind criticism of Kagan — promoted the column on his Twitter account and kept up a drumbeat against Kagan. . . .'I've devoted everything I can to making the case against Kagan before Obama chooses, precisely because I know that once he makes his selection, the overwhelming majority of progressives and Democrats will cheer for her even if they have no idea what she thinks or believes,' Greenwald said. . . .Prominent liberal legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky made that very point this week in an interview. 'The reality is that Democrats, including liberals, will accept and push whomever Obama picks,' said Chemerinsky, founding dean of the University of California-Irvine law school. 'Obviously, liberals hope that Obama will pick someone more from the left than the center. It can't be that Republicans pick conservatives and Democrats pick only moderates.'" John Ward, "Liberal activists intensify attacks on Kagan as court pick nears," The Daily Caller, May 7, 2010.
Roe V. Wade and Ties to Abortion
"Elena Kagan has no judicial record from which to determine her position on Roe v. Wade, but she has publicly criticized the 1991 Supreme Court ruling to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to restrict funding from groups that performed or promoted abortion, and has also criticized crisis pregnancy centers," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of pro-life political action group Susan B. Anthony List.
"Additionally, President Obama has said he prefers a Supreme Court nominee who would take a special interest in 'women's rights'—a barely masked euphemism for abortion rights," Dannenfelser noted. "Through the judicial confirmation process the American people must know where Elena Kagan stands on the abortion issue, and it is the responsibility of the U.S. Senate to find out."
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life similarly criticized the move, saying on Monday that "Elena Kagan has strong ties to abortion-advocacy organizations and expressed admiration for activist judges who have worked to advance social policy rather than to impartially interpret the law."
Title X Funding
Previously, Elena Kagan publicly criticized a 1991 Supreme Court ruling in Rust v. Sullivan that upheld the right of the Department of Health and Human Services that restricted Title X funding from groups that performed or promoted abortion. Additionally, she has expressed her belief that pregnancy centers should be barred from guiding teens in decisions about their pregnancy.
Petition
Students for Life of America and LifeNews.com are cosponsoring a petition opposing the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. I just signed it and encourage other pro-lifers to as well.
Click here for more information.
Compiled from: OneNewsNow, FRCBlog and the Susan B. Anthony List
Publish Date: May 10,2010
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