| It seems the president has made his choice to replace Justice Stevens and he has chosen the Solicitor General, Elena Kagan:
AP source: Obama chooses Kagan for Supreme Court
President Barack Obama will nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, a person familiar with the president's thinking said Sunday night.
The move positions the court to have three female justices for the first time in history.
The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been made public. Obama will announce his choice at 10 a.m. Monday in the East Room of the White House.
Known as sharp and politically savvy, Kagan has led a blazing legal career: first female dean of Harvard Law School, first woman to serve as the top Supreme Court lawyer for any administration, and now first in Obama's mind to succeed legendary Justice John Paul Stevens.
At 50 years old, Kagan would be the youngest justice on the court, one of many factors working in her favor. She has the chance to extend Obama's legacy for a generation.
Kagan has clerked for Thurgood Marshall, worked for Bill Clinton and earned a stellar reputation as a student, teacher and manager of the elite academic world. Her standing has risen in Obama's eyes as his government's lawyer before the high court over the last year.
Yet Kagan would be the first justice without judicial experience in almost 40 years. All of the three other finalists she beat out for the job are federal appeals court judges, and all nine of the current justices served on the federal bench before being elevated.
The interwebs are currently all aflame about the choice and have been for quite some time, actually. Here's a couple of opinions, both for and against Kagan's nomination, here:
Harvard Law professor and Change Congress founder, Lawrence Lessig, makes the case in favor of the pick here:
A Case for Kagan
I believe I have some standing to make this case. I have known Kagan since we both began teaching together almost 20 years ago. As we were the only two faculty beginning that year, we became quick friends and allies. We shared a subscription to the opera. We conspired about how to build an even greater law school. And though she left to work for Clinton in 1995, we have remained close and constant friends. In the fall of 2008, she lured me back from paradise (Stanford) to the Harvard Law School. I have known her as well as just about anyone else I have known in the legal academy.
The part that everyone gets about Elena Kagan is brilliance and strength. The questions are about her politics and resolve. Is she a liberal, or in the language of the times, a progressive? Would she be a triangulator, or a justice fighting hard for what she believes?
The Kagan I know is a progressive. But we should be careful about precisely what that term means today. Constitutional law has been affected fundamentally by the work of scholars and judges such as my former boss, Justice Scalia. Their influence has plainly reoriented constitutional law to ask not, "What would be the best answer?" to any particular question, but instead, "What is the answer of fidelity?" Or again, what is the answer that most faithfully applies the law of the different generations of our Framers -- the Founders, the Civil War Republicans, and the Progressives at the beginning of the last century. I'm not sure that "liberals" on the Court have always accepted this framing. Certainly Douglas and Holmes didn't feel themselves so constrained. And I can see how many wonder whether some of the more prominent liberals since the Warren Court have accepted this framing either. But among those who do accept that the charge of a judge is interpretive fidelity, there are progressives and conservatives. Diane Wood's opinions plainly mark her as a progressive. Justice Thomas is plainly among the conservatives. The Kagan I know is with Wood in her views about what the constitution means. She is with both Wood and Thomas in believing that it is the Framers (and again, every generation of them) whose views, as expressed in the text of the Constitution, a judge should apply.
Go read the rest, as they say. It's definitely worth your time.
Glennzilla has an opposing view here:
The case against Elena Kagan
The prospect that Stevens will be replaced by Elena Kagan has led to the growing perception that Barack Obama will actually take a Supreme Court dominated by Justices Scalia (Reagan), Thomas (Bush 41), Roberts (Bush 43), Alito (Bush 43) and Kennedy (Reagan) and move it further to the Right. Joe Lieberman went on Fox News this weekend to celebrate the prospect that "President Obama may nominate someone in fact who makes the Court slightly less liberal," while The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus predicted: "The court that convenes on the first Monday in October is apt to be more conservative than the one we have now." Last Friday, I made the same argument: that replacing Stevens with Kagan risks moving the Court to the Right, perhaps substantially to the Right (by "the Right," I mean: closer to the Bush/Cheney vision of Government and the Thomas/Scalia approach to executive power and law).
...
Given the severity of the crisis posed by Bush/Cheney lawlessness, what justifies someone with Kagan's platform -- Dean of Harvard Law School and former Clinton White House lawyer -- remaining utterly silent in the face of that assault? Even if one believes that a Law School Dean should generally be attentive to institution-building, didn't the severity of the legal crisis spawned by Bush and Cheney merit serious opposition from those in a position to voice it? Before any progressive considers supporting her nomination to the Court, shouldn't they be able to point to some evidence, somewhere, that she opposed the core claims used to prop up the Bush/Cheney assault on the Constitution and the rule of law?
Let the bloodletting begin. As I'm sure most sentient beings have been aware of since long before Justice Stevens announced his retirement, whomever the president chooses will soon be described, by all the usual suspects, as the most radical, "wise latina-ist", socialist, "outside the mainstream" purveyor of "empathy" or other such nonsense - maybe even a straight up racist - that has ever existed under the sun.
Seems there is plenty in this pick to piss off everyone. Should be a rather interesting summer. |
