In God We Trust


Liberal Supreme Court Pick

President Obama introduced Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his choice for the Supreme Court in the East Room of the White House in Washington on... 

 IBDEditorials.com

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.

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