The New Republic

The Wall Street Journal digs up Elena Kagan's 1983 master's thesis, in which she attacks judicial activism: In the Oxford paper, Ms. Kagan wrote that Supreme Court justices should rest their rulings squarely on a firm legal foundation, such as statutes and court precedents. Only then can court rulings command respect and stand the test of time, she wrote. ... READ MORE >>

His selective concern for diversity has resurfaced: [O]f the last seven justices nominated by Democrats JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, one was black, Marshall; one was Puerto Rican, Sonia Sotomayor. The other five were Jews: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. READ MORE >>

WASHINGTON— Brace yourself for several months of occasionally biting but essentially meaningless political theater over the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Underlying the fight will be a fundamental divide between liberals and conservatives over the direction of the court. Thus, many senators who supported Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will oppose Kagan, while most who were against Roberts and Alito will be for her. READ MORE >>

[Guest post by the TNR staff.] What should we make of Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court? Read all of The New Republic's analysis below. Jeffrey Rosen explains why Kagan is the ideal justice to represent Obama's judicial philosophy: READ MORE >>

Paul Campos has a provocative column for TNR making the case that Elena Kagan is an unknown legal quantity. I agree with this logic but not his conclusion. (This is not uncommon.) Before I get to that, since his credentials have been called into question, I thought I'd share. Paul is the son of Spanish immigrants who fled the Franco regime and made their way to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Paul attended the University of Michigan as an undergraduate and for law school, where he made law review and graduated magna cum laude. READ MORE >>

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Tom Goldstein is a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and lecturer at Stanford and Harvard Law Schools. He is the founder of SCOTUSblog, where this piece was originally posted. Here is how I think the nomination process is likely to play out. I divide it into process and substance. READ MORE >>

This nobody who is suddenly somebody is Paul Campos. He is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. Other than being an unremarkable law professor, he is known largely for trivial interests: obesity, the personality of judges, the origins of the chicken sandwich, the Notre Dame football team. He has also shown some knack for interdisciplinary work. For example, he wrote a piece, “Fat Judges Need Not Apply,” for the Daily Beast, which, as you know, is a very serious journal. READ MORE >>

Imagine a candidate for the U.S. Senate who has never taken a public stand on almost any policy issue. Imagine that her campaign consists of asking people for their support because, according to friends and colleagues, the candidate is smart, fair, and good to others. When her friends are asked what her views are on various political matters, they reply that they don't know—but that they're confident she'd make an excellent senator. READ MORE >>

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