Liberal Supreme Court Pick
Supreme Court:
President Obama's high court pick has practically no paper trail, yet her
left-leaning orientation is clear. The president knows what he's getting in
his old friend Elena Kagan; America doesn't — yet.
'Our solicitor general, and my friend: Elena Kagan." That
was how Obama introduced his replacement for the most aggressively liberal
member of today's court, John Paul Stevens, appointed by Republican Gerald
Ford 35 years ago. "My friend" speaks volumes. Kagan has never been a
judge, so we have no written opinions or dissents upon which the Senate — or
the American people — can judge her suitability to serve as one of the nine
most powerful judges in the country. But the president's acquaintance
with her dates back to the early 1990s when both taught at the University of
Chicago Law School. There, the two no doubt attended many of the law
faculty's famous thrice-weekly Quadrangle Club roundtable lunches. As
the Chicago Sun-Times notes, that traditional gathering has "one ground
rule: The conversation has to be about law or politics." And in taking part
in them, Kagan "was a very lively and opinionated person," Chicago Provost
Geoffrey Stone tells the newspaper.
So Obama knows a great deal — maybe everything — about his
nominee's judicial views. We, on the other hand, know little beyond the
telling fact that she's a conspicuously popular choice when a liberal
Democrat needs a lawyer to do some politicking. Before Obama made her
his solicitor general, Kagan was Bill Clinton's associate White House
counsel and served on his Domestic Policy Council. Clinton nominated her to
the D.C. Circuit near the end of his second term, but the then-Republican
majority in the Senate refused to act on that and other nominations.
Moreover, it was Lawrence Summers, Clinton-Obama economic bigwig and
then-Harvard president, who in 2003 was responsible for Kagan becoming dean
of Harvard Law School — another political appointment. Kagan clerked for
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and for Abner Mikva, the
Carter-appointed D.C. Circuit judge, a former Democratic Chicago
congressman, a Clinton White House counsel and an Obama legal adviser.
It's noteworthy that after Kagan's ill-fated Clinton court
nomination, Chicago Law wouldn't let her come back to its faculty, gleaning
that she'd just be waiting for her next plum political job. Even the
New York Times, which would undoubtedly be happy with a Justice Kagan, is
grousing that "whether by ambitious design or by habit of mind, Ms. Kagan
has spent decades carefully husbanding her thoughts and shielding her
philosophy from view."
Put it all together and this looks like an ambitious
radical stealthily, and for many years, grooming herself for the pinnacle of
judicial power. But is this nonjudge, with precious little trial experience
even as a lawyer, even qualified? As the Hot Air blog noted, her
appearance before the justices representing the government on the losing
side of the recent Citizens United case was an embarrassment. For falsely
claiming that for over a century the high court endorsed expenditure limits
on political speech by corporations, Kagan was immediately scolded by
Justices Scalia and Kennedy.
"We only disapprove of something when somebody asks us
to," Scalia reminded Kagan. Kennedy complained that "it doesn't clarify the
situation ... to suggest that for 100 years we would have allowed
expenditure limitations. ... We've never allowed that."
And furthermore, why another New York City liberal who
went to Princeton? Apparently the only difference between Kagan and the
president's first nominee, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, is, as he said in
announcing her, that Kagan is a fan of the Mets, not the Yankees.
Kagan's undergrad thesis at Princeton — one of the few writings we have by
her — was on the history of socialism in New York City. Does that suggest
someone in touch with most Americans?
Justices Alito, Ginsburg, Scalia and Sotomayor are all
from the Big Apple or New Jersey. Justice Breyer comes from San Francisco,
and Kennedy's hometown is the seat of government in California, Sacramento
(having also worked in a San Francisco law firm). Only Chief Justice
Roberts, from Indiana, and Justice Thomas, from Georgia, have any claim
among Kagan's possible future colleagues as being in touch with "fly-over
country." With the Supreme Court likely to scrutinize the
constitutionality of ObamaCare and other recent Washington power grabs,
Elena Kagan is another liberal elitist sure to give her stamp of approval.