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Elena Kagan

Elena Kagan (/ˈkɡən/ KAY-guhn; born April 28, 1960) is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10, 2010, and has served since August 7, 2010. Kagan is the fourth woman to become a member of the Court.

Elena Kagan
Official portrait, 2013
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Assumed office
August 7, 2010
Nominated byBarack Obama
Preceded byJohn Paul Stevens
45th Solicitor General of the United States
In office
March 19, 2009 – May 17, 2010
PresidentBarack Obama
DeputyNeal Katyal[1]
Preceded byEdwin Kneedler[2] (acting)
Succeeded byNeal Katyal[1] (acting)
11th Dean of Harvard Law School
In office
July 1, 2003 – March 19, 2009
Preceded byRobert Clark
Succeeded byMartha Minow[3]
Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council
In office
1997–2000
PresidentBill Clinton
Preceded byJeremy Ben-Ami[4]
Succeeded byEric Liu[5]
Personal details
Born (1960-04-28) April 28, 1960 (age 62)
New York City, U.S.
EducationPrinceton University (AB)
Worcester College, Oxford (MPhil)
Harvard University (JD)
Signature

Kagan was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from Princeton University, Worcester College, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, she clerked for a federal Court of Appeals judge and for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel, and later as a policy adviser under President Bill Clinton. After a nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which expired without action, she became a professor at Harvard Law School and was later named its first female dean.

In 2009, Kagan became the first female solicitor general of the United States. President Obama later nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy arising from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. The United States Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 63–37. As of 2022, she is the most recent justice appointed without any prior judicial experience. She is considered part of the Court's liberal wing but tends to be one of the more moderate justices of that group. She has written the majority opinion in some landmark cases, such as Cooper v. Harris, Chiafalo v. Washington, and Kisor v. Wilkie, as well as several notable dissenting opinions, such as in Rucho v. Common Cause, West Virginia v. EPA, Brnovich v. DNC, Janus v. AFSCME, and Seila Law v. CFPB.

Early life

Kagan was born on April 28, 1960, in Manhattan, the second of three children[6][7] of Robert Kagan, an attorney who represented tenants trying to remain in their homes, and Gloria (Gittelman) Kagan, who taught at Hunter College Elementary School.[8][9] Both her parents were the children of Russian Jewish immigrants.[9] Kagan has two brothers, Marc and Irving.[10]

Kagan and her family lived in a third-floor apartment at West End Avenue and 75th Street,[11] and attended Lincoln Square Synagogue.[12] She was independent and strong-willed in her youth and, according to a former law partner of her father's, clashed with her Orthodox rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, over aspects of her bat mitzvah.[11] "She had strong opinions about what a bat mitzvah should be like, which didn't parallel the wishes of the rabbi," her father's colleague said.[13] Kagan and Riskin negotiated a solution. Riskin had never performed a ritual bat mitzvah before.[12] She "felt very strongly that there should be ritual bat mitzvah in the synagogue, no less important than the ritual bar mitzvah. This was really the first formal bat mitzvah we had", he said.[12] Kagan asked to read from the Torah on a Saturday morning as the boys did, but ultimately read from the Book of Ruth on a Friday night.[12] She now practices Conservative Judaism.[12]

Kagan's childhood friend Margaret Raymond recalled that she was a teenage smoker but not a partier.[11] On Saturday nights, Raymond and Kagan were "more apt to sit on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and talk."[11] Kagan also loved literature and reread Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice every year.[11] In her 1977 Hunter College High School yearbook, she is pictured in a judge's robe and holding a gavel.[14] Next to the photo is a quotation from former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter: "Government is itself an art, one of the subtlest of arts."[15]

Education

 
Kagan graduates from Harvard Law School in 1986

Kagan attended Hunter College High School, where her mother taught. The school had a reputation as one of the most elite learning institutions for high school girls and attracted students from all over New York City. Kagan emerged as one of the school's more outstanding students.[16] She was elected president of the student government and served on a student-faculty consultative committee.[17] Kagan then attended Princeton University, graduating in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in history.[18] She was particularly drawn to American history and archival research.[19] She wrote a senior thesis under historian Sean Wilentz titled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900–1933". In it she wrote, "Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America."[20] Wilentz says Kagan did not mean to defend socialism, noting that she "was interested in it. To study something is not to endorse it."[11]

As an undergraduate, Kagan also served as editorial chair of The Daily Princetonian.[18][21] Along with eight other students,[a] she penned a "Declaration of the Campaign for a Democratic University". It called for "a fundamental restructuring of university governance" and condemned Princeton's administration for making decisions "behind closed doors".[22] Despite the liberal tone of The Daily Princetonian's editorials, Kagan was politically restrained in her dealings with fellow reporters. Her Daily Princetonian colleague Steven Bernstein has said he "cannot recall a time in which Kagan expressed her political views".[23] He described Kagan's political stances as "sort of liberal, democratic, progressive tradition, and everything with lower case".[23]

In 1980, Kagan received Princeton's Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship,[b] one of the highest general awards the university confers. This enabled her to study at Worcester College, Oxford. As part of her graduation requirement, Kagan wrote a thesis called "The Development and Erosion of the American Exclusionary Rule: A Study in Judicial Method". It presented a critical look at the exclusionary rule and its evolution on the Supreme Court—in particular the Warren Court.[25] She earned a Master of Philosophy in Politics at Oxford in 1983.[26]

In 1983, at age 23, Kagan entered Harvard Law School. Her adjustment to Harvard's atmosphere was rocky; she received the worst grades of her entire law school career in her first semester. Kagan went on to earn an A in 17 of the 21 courses she took at Harvard, and was a supervisory editor of the Harvard Law Review.[27] She worked as a summer associate at the Wall Street law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where she worked in the litigation department.[28] She graduated in 1986 with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude.[29][30] Her friend Jeffrey Toobin recalls that Kagan "stood out from the start as one with a formidable mind. She's good with people. At the time, the law school was a politically charged and divided place. She navigated the factions with ease, and won the respect of everyone."[31]

Career

Early career

After law school, Kagan was a law clerk for judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1987 to 1988. She became one of Mikva's favorite clerks; he called her "the pick of the litter".[32] From 1988 to 1989, Kagan clerked for justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall said he hired Kagan to help him put the "spark" back into his opinions as the Court had been undergoing a conservative shift since William Rehnquist became Chief Justice in 1986.[33] Marshall nicknamed the 5-foot-3-inch (1.60-metre) Kagan "Shorty".[11]

From 1989 to 1991, Kagan was in private practice at the Washington, D.C. law firm Williams & Connolly.[34] As a junior associate, she drafted briefs and conducted discovery.[35] During her short time at the firm, she handled five lawsuits that involved First Amendment or media law issues and libel issues.[36]

In 1991, Kagan became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.[37] While there she first met Barack Obama, a guest lecturer at the school.[38][39] While on the UC faculty, Kagan published a law review article on the regulation of First Amendment hate speech in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul;[40] an article discussing the significance of governmental motive in regulating speech;[41] and a review of a book by Stephen L. Carter discussing the judicial confirmation process.[42] In the first article, which became highly influential, Kagan argued that the Supreme Court should examine governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases and analyzed historic draft-card burning and flag burning cases in light of free speech arguments.[43]

In 1993, Senator Joe Biden appointed Kagan as a special counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. During this time, she worked on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.[44]

Kagan became a tenured professor of law in 1995.[37] According to her colleagues, Kagan's students complimented and admired her from the beginning, and she was granted tenure "despite the reservations of some colleagues who thought she had not published enough".[11]

Clinton administration

 
Kagan in the Oval Office with President Bill Clinton in 1997 during her tenure as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy

Kagan served as Associate White House Counsel for Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1996, when Mikva served as White House Counsel. She worked on such issues affecting the Clinton administration as the Whitewater controversy, the White House travel office controversy, and Clinton v. Jones.[45] From 1997 to 1999, she worked as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. Kagan worked on topics like budget appropriations, campaign finance reform, and social welfare issues. Her work is catalogued in the Clinton Library.[46] Kagan coauthored a 1997 memo urging Clinton to support a ban on late-term abortions: "We recommend that you endorse the Daschle amendment in order to sustain your credibility on HR 1122 and prevent Congress from overriding your veto."[47]

On June 17, 1999, Clinton nominated Kagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace James L. Buckley, who took senior status in 1996. The Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican Chairman, Orrin Hatch, scheduled no hearing, effectively ending her nomination. When the Senate term ended, her nomination lapsed, as did that of fellow Clinton nominee Allen Snyder.[48][49]

Academia

 
Kagan as Harvard Law School dean in 2008
 
Kagan's 2009 official portrait as Harvard Law School dean

After her service in the White House and her lapsed judicial nomination, Kagan returned to academia in 1999. She initially sought to return to the University of Chicago, but she had given up her tenured position during her extended stint in the Clinton Administration, and the school chose not to rehire her, reportedly due to doubts about her commitment to academia.[50] Kagan quickly found a position as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. While there, she authored a law review article on United States administrative law, focusing on the president's role in formulating and influencing federal administrative law. The article was honored as the year's top scholarly article by the American Bar Association's Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.[51]

In 2001, Kagan was named a full professor at Harvard Law School and in 2003 she was named dean of the Law School by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers.[52] She succeeded Robert C. Clark, who had served as dean for over a decade. The focus of her tenure was on improving student satisfaction. Efforts included constructing new facilities and reforming the first-year curriculum as well as aesthetic changes and creature comforts, such as free morning coffee. She has been credited for a consensus-building leadership style that defused the school's previous ideological discord.[53][54][55]

As dean, Kagan inherited a $400 million capital campaign, "Setting the Standard," in 2003. It ended in 2008 with a record-breaking $476 million raised, 19% more than the original goal.[56] Kagan made a number of prominent new hires, increasing the size of the faculty considerably. Her coups included hiring legal scholar Cass Sunstein away from the University of Chicago[57] and Lawrence Lessig away from Stanford.[58] She also made an effort to hire conservative scholars, such as former Bush administration official Jack Goldsmith, for the traditionally liberal-leaning faculty.[54][59]

According to Kevin Washburn, then dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law, Kagan transformed Harvard Law School from a harsh environment for students to one that was much more student-focused.[55]

During her deanship, Kagan upheld a decades-old policy barring military recruiters from the Office of Career Services because she felt the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy discriminated against gays and lesbians. According to Campus Progress,

As dean, Kagan supported a lawsuit intended to overturn the Solomon Amendment so military recruiters might be banned from the grounds of schools like Harvard. When a federal appeals court ruled The Pentagon could not withhold funds, she banned the military from Harvard's campus once again. The case was challenged in the Supreme Court, which ruled the military could indeed require schools to allow recruiters if they wanted to receive federal money. Kagan, though she allowed the military back, simultaneously urged students to demonstrate against Don't Ask, Don't Tell.[60][61]

In October 2003, Kagan sent an email to students and faculty deploring that military recruiters had shown up on campus in violation of this policy. The email read in part, "This action causes me deep distress. I abhor the military's discriminatory recruitment policy".[62] She also wrote that it was "a profound wrong—a moral injustice of the first order".[62]

From 2005 to 2008, Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute. She received a $10,000 stipend for her service.[63]

By early 2007, Kagan was a finalist for the presidency of Harvard University after Lawrence Summers's resignation the previous year. The position ultimately went to Drew Gilpin Faust instead. Kagan was reportedly disappointed, and law school students threw her a party to express their appreciation for her leadership.[64]

Solicitor General

On January 5, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama announced he would nominate Kagan to be Solicitor General.[65][66] She was vetted for the position of Deputy Attorney General before her selection as Solicitor General.[67] At the time of her nomination, Kagan had never argued a case before any court.[68] At least two previous solicitors general, Robert Bork and Kenneth Starr, had no previous Supreme Court appearances.[69]

The two main questions senators had for Kagan during her confirmation hearings were whether she would defend statutes that she personally opposed and whether she was qualified to be Solicitor General given her lack of courtroom experience.[70] Kagan testified that she would defend laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, pursuant to which states were not required to recognize same-sex marriages originating in other states, "if there is any reasonable basis to do so".[71] The Senate confirmed her on March 19, 2009, by a vote of 61 to 31.[72] She was the first woman to hold the position.[73] Upon taking office, Kagan pledged to defend any statute as long as there was a colorable argument to be made, regardless of her personal opinions.[70] As Solicitor General, Kagan's job was to act as the lawyer for the United States and defend legislation and executive actions in appeals before the Supreme Court.[73][44] Thus the arguments she made as Solicitor General were not necessarily indicative of her personal beliefs.[73]

Kagan's first appearance before the Supreme Court was on September 9, 2009, one month before the typical start of a new term in October, in the re-argument of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).[74] During argument, she asked the Court to uphold a 1990 precedent that allowed the government to restrict corporations' use of their treasuries to campaign for or against political candidates. As an alternative argument, Kagan further contended that if the Court would not uphold precedent, it should keep its ruling narrowly focused on corporations that resembled the petitioning organization, Citizens United, rather than reconsidering the constitutionality of broader restrictions on corporate campaign finance.[74][75][76] In a 5–4 decision, the Court overturned precedent and allowed corporations to spend freely in elections, a major defeat for the Obama administration.[77]

During her 15 months as Solicitor General, Kagan argued six cases before the Supreme Court.[78] The Washington Post described her style during argument as "confident" and "conversational".[73] She helped win four cases: Salazar v. Buono, 559 U.S. 700 (2010), United States v. Comstock, 560 U.S. 126 (2010), Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1 (2010), and Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, 561 U.S. 477 (2010).[79][c]

Supreme Court

Nomination

 
Kagan meets with then President Obama in the Oval Office, April 2010, a month before nominating her to the U.S. Supreme Court
Obama nominates Kagan to be an Associate Justice for the United States Supreme Court

Before Obama's election, Kagan was the subject of media speculation as a potential Supreme Court nominee if a Democratic president were elected in 2008.[81] Obama had his first Supreme Court vacancy to fill in 2009 when Associate Justice David H. Souter announced his upcoming retirement.[82] Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod later recounted that during the search for a new justice, Antonin Scalia told him he hoped Obama would nominate Kagan, because of her intelligence.[83] On May 13, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Obama was considering Kagan, among others.[84] On May 26, 2009, Obama announced that he had chosen Sonia Sotomayor.[85]

On April 9, 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens announced he would retire at the start of the Court's summer 2010 recess, triggering new speculation about potential replacements, and Kagan was once again considered a contender.[86] In a Fresh Dialogues interview, Jeffrey Toobin, a Supreme Court analyst and Kagan's friend and law school classmate,[87] speculated that she would be Obama's nominee, describing her as "very much an Obama-type person, a moderate Democrat, a consensus builder".[88] This alarmed some liberals and progressives, who worried that "replacing Stevens with Kagan risks moving the Court to the right, perhaps substantially to the right".[89]

On May 10, 2010, Obama nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court.[90] The deans of over one-third of the country's law schools, 69 people in total, endorsed the nomination in an open letter in early June. It lauded what it called her coalition-building skills and "understanding of both doctrine and policy" as well as her written record of legal analysis.[91]

Confirmation hearings

 
Kagan, Obama, and Chief Justice John Roberts before her investiture ceremony, October 1, 2010
 
Kagan (right), then a Supreme Court nominee, meets with U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen

Kagan's confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee began on June 28.[92] As they began, Kagan was expected to be confirmed, with Senator John Cornyn calling her "justice-to-be".[93] During the hearings, she demonstrated a deep knowledge of Supreme Court cases, expounding upon cases senators mentioned in their questions to her without taking notes on the questions. A number of Democratic senators criticized recent decisions of the court as "activist", but Kagan avoided joining in their criticisms.[94] Like many prior nominees, including Chief Justice John Roberts, she declined to answer whether she thought particular cases were correctly decided or how she would vote on particular issues.[94][95] Senators Jon Kyl and Arlen Specter[d] criticized her evasiveness. Specter said it obscured the way justices actually ruled once on the Court.[95] He noted that Kagan published an article in the University of Chicago Law Review in 1995 in which she criticized the evasiveness she came to practice.[97][93] Republican senators criticized Kagan's background as more political than judicial; she responded by promising to be impartial and fair.[92] On July 20, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13–6 to recommend Kagan's confirmation to the full Senate. On August 5 the full Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 63–37.[98] The voting was largely along party lines, with five Republicans (Richard Lugar, Judd Gregg, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe) supporting her and one Democrat (Ben Nelson) opposing.[99]

Kagan's swearing-in ceremony took place on August 7, 2010, at the White House. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the prescribed constitutional and judicial oaths of office, at which time she became the 112th justice (100th associate justice) of the Supreme Court.[100][101] She is the first person appointed to the Court without any prior experience as a judge since William Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell Jr., who both became members in 1972.[102][103][104] She is the fourth female justice in the court's history,[e] and the eighth Jewish justice.[105][f]

Ideologically, Kagan is part of the Supreme Court's liberal wing:[107][108][109] she voted with the liberal bloc in King v. Burwell, 576 U.S. 988 (2015), finding that Obamacare's subsidies and individual mandate are constitutional, and in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), which prohibits states from outlawing same-sex marriage.[110] In 2018, Slate observed that Kagan had crossed ideological lines on multiple cases during the preceding term, and considered her to be part of a centrist bloc along with Justices Roberts, Stephen Breyer, and Anthony Kennedy.[111] Still, FiveThirtyEight observed that Kagan voted with her more liberal peers, Ginsburg and Sotomayor, over 90% of the time.[112] Also during the 2017–18 term, Kagan most commonly agreed with Breyer; they voted together in 93% of cases. She agreed least often with Justice Samuel Alito, in 58.82% of cases.[113]

Because of her service as solicitor general, Kagan recused herself from 28 out of the 78 cases heard during her first year on the Court to avoid conflicts of interest.[114] In 2017, she recused herself from the immigrant-detention case Jennings v. Rodriguez because she authorized a filing in the case when she was solicitor general.[115]

Kagan was the circuit justice, the justice responsible for handling emergency requests, for the Sixth and Seventh Circuits.[116] After Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation, she was assigned to the Ninth Circuit, the largest US circuit court by area. It includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Nevada, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Washington state.[117][116]

Jurisprudence

Kagan's first opinion as a justice, Ransom v. FIA Card Services, was a statutory interpretation case where the Court was tasked with determining what income a debtor was allowed to shield from creditors in bankruptcy.[118] In an 8–1 decision, she held that the Chapter 13 Bankruptcy statute precludes a debtor from taking an allowance for car-related expenses if the debtor owns the car outright and does not make loan or lease payments. She reasoned the word "applicable" was key to the statute, and debtors could only take allowances for car-related costs that applied.[119][120] Kagan wrote the majority opinion in Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC. In the 6–3 decision in favor of Marvel, she held that a patentee cannot receive royalties after the patent has expired.[121] Her opinion included several references to Spider-Man.[122]

First Amendment

Kagan's first dissent came in the First Amendment case Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, 563 U.S. 125 (2011).[123] Writing for the liberal wing, she took issue with the majority's creation of an exception to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.[123] The majority held that Arizona taxpayers cannot challenge tax credits for those who donate to groups that provide scholarships to religious schools, drawing a distinction between the way the Court treats tax credits and grants.[123][124] Kagan deemed this distinction "arbitrary" because tax credits and grants can be used to achieve the same objectives. She viewed the majority's decision as creating a loophole for governments to fund religion.[123] In another Establishment Clause case, Town of Greece v. Galloway, 572 U.S. 565 (2014), Kagan wrote a dissent arguing that a prayer at a town council meeting failed to treat all Americans the same regardless of religion.[125] Greece involved a town in New York inviting chaplains, for several years all Christian, to give a prayer before town council meetings.[126] Unlike Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), where the Supreme Court had permitted a state legislature to open with a prayer, Kagan noted the board in Greece was a forum for ordinary citizens.[127] She argued the use of prayer showed a preference for a particular religion and thus violated Americans' First Amendment rights.[127]

Sixth Amendment

Kagan dissented in Luis v. United States, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), where the five-justice majority held that the pretrial freezing of untainted assets not traced back to criminal activity was a violation of a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel when those assets were needed to retain counsel of the defendant's choosing.[128] The defendant, Sila Luis, had been charged with Medicare fraud, in which prosecutors alleged he illegally charged $45 million for unneeded services. The prosecutors asked a judge to freeze $2 million of Luis's assets, which Luis said she needed to pay legal bills, after she had already spent most of the $45 million she made from the alleged scheme.[129] An earlier Supreme Court case, United States v. Monsanto, 491 U.S. 600 (1989), held that a court could freeze a defendant's assets pretrial, including funds obtained through the alleged sale of drugs, even when those assets were being used to hire an attorney.[130] The majority sought to distinguish their holding in Luis from Monsanto based upon the nature of the funds being frozen; Luis's funds were not directly linked to her crime and Monsanto's funds were.[128][130] Kennedy dissented in Luis because he did not think criminal defendants should be treated differently based on how quickly they spent their illegal proceeds. Kagan agreed with Kennedy that the Court's decision created inequity and drew an arbitrary distinction, but further opined that Monsanto might have been wrongly decided.[130] She suggested she would be willing to overturn such precedent in the future, but declined to do so in the case at bar because Luis had not sought that relief.[128][130][129] Her vote thus rested on procedural grounds as she expressed skepticism that the government should be able to freeze the assets of a criminal defendant not yet convicted, and thus still benefiting from the presumption of innocence, by merely showing probable cause that the property will be subject to forfeiture.[130]

Gerrymandering

Kagan wrote for the majority in Cooper v. Harris, 581 U.S. ___ (2017), striking down the configuration of two of North Carolina's congressional districts.[131] The Court held the districts' boundaries were unconstitutional because they relied excessively on race and did not pass the strict scrutiny standard of review.[132][133][134] In a footnote, Kagan set forth a new principle, that congressional districts drawn with race as the dominant factor may be found to be an unlawful racial gerrymander even if they have another goal, such as sorting voters by political affiliation.[133] Applying this principle to the facts of the case, the Court unanimously struck down North Carolina's District 1, where state lawmakers had increased the state's black voting-age population by 4.1% even though the black population had already been able to elect preferred candidates before the district lines were redrawn.[132] The increase of black voters in District 1 resulted in a decrease of black voters in other districts.[134] The Court also struck down District 12 by a vote of 5–3 for similar shifts in its racial composition. The dissent argued that those challenging the validity of the district had not proved that race caused the change in District 12.[132] Kagan quoted Court precedent that race must only be a predominant consideration, and that challengers did not need to prove politics was not a motivating factor.[132][133]

In June 2019, Kagan dissented in Rucho v. Common Cause, a 5-4 ruling that held that partisan gerrymandering is a non-justiciable claim. Kagan wrote, "Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections. With respect but deep sadness, I dissent."[135] Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor joined her dissent.

Voting rights

In Brnovich v. DNC, Kagan wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Breyer and Sotomayor. She would have struck down the Arizona voting laws that throw out votes that are cast out-of-precinct and ban ballot harvesting. Kagan wrote that African-American, Latino, and Native American voters are disproportionately likely to have their votes thrown out for being out-of-precinct (compared to White voters). She concluded, "The law that confronted one of this country’s most enduring wrongs; pledged to give every American, of every race, an equal chance to participate in our democracy; and now stands as the crucial tool to achieve that goal. That law, of all laws, deserves the sweep and power Congress gave it. That law, of all laws, should not be diminished by this Court."[136]

Environment

Joined by Justices Breyer and Sotomayor, Kagan dissented in West Virginia v. EPA, which struck down the proposed Clean Power Plan. She wrote, "It is EPA (that's the Environmental Protection Agency, in case the majority forgot) acting to address the greatest environmental challenge of our time. So too, there is nothing special about the Plan's 'who': fossil-fuel-fired power plants. In Utility Air, we thought EPA's regulation of churches and schools highly unusual. But fossil-fuel-fired plants? Those plants pollute—a lot—and so they have long lived under the watchful eye of EPA. That was true even before EPA began regulating carbon dioxide." Kagan concluded, "The subject matter of the regulation here makes the Court's intervention all the more troubling. Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. And let's say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening. Respectfully, I dissent."[137][138]

Writing style

In her first term on the Court, Kagan did not write any separate opinions, and wrote the fewest opinions of any justice. She wrote only majority opinions or dissents that more senior justices assigned to her, and in which she and a group of justices agreed upon a rationale for deciding the case. This tendency to write for a group rather than herself made it difficult to discern her own views or where she might lean in future cases.[139] She wrote the fewest opinions for the terms from 2011 through 2014, tying with Kennedy in 2011 and 2013.[140]

Kagan's writing has been characterized as conversational, employing a range of rhetorical styles.[141] She has said that she approaches writing on the Court like she used to approach the classroom, with numerous strategies to engage the reader.[142] Her opinions use examples and analogies to make them more accessible to a broad audience.[139][143]

Other activities

 
The first four female U.S. Supreme Court justices: Sandra Day O'Connor, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Kagan, October 2010. (O'Connor is not wearing a robe because she had retired before the picture was taken).

Like other justices, Kagan makes public appearances when she is not hearing cases.[144] In her first four years on the Court, she made at least 20 public appearances.[145] Kagan tends to choose speaking engagements that allow her to speak to students.[144]

Time magazine named Kagan one of its Time 100 most influential people for 2013. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the article on Kagan, calling her "an incisive legal thinker" and "excellent communicator".[146] That same year, a painting of the four women to have served as Supreme Court justices, Kagan, Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and O'Connor, was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.[147] In 2018, Kagan received the Marshall-Wythe Medallion from William & Mary Law School,[148] and an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Hunter College.[149]

Personal life

Kagan has never married. During her confirmation, a photo of her playing softball, which is sometimes characterized in popular culture as unfeminine, led to unsubstantiated claims that Kagan was a lesbian.[150] Her friends have criticized the rumors. Kagan's law school roommate Sarah Walzer said, "I've known her for most of her adult life and I know she's straight."[151]

Kagan's Harvard colleagues and friends have characterized her as a good conversationalist, warm, with a good sense of humor.[152] Before joining the Supreme Court, she was known to play poker and smoke cigars.[152][153]

Early in her tenure as a justice, Kagan began socializing with several of her new colleagues.[154] She attended the opera with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had dinner with Sonia Sotomayor, attended legal events with Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, and went hunting with Antonin Scalia.[154] The hunting trips stemmed from a promise Kagan made to U.S. Senator Jim Risch of Idaho during a meeting before her confirmation; Risch expressed concern that, as a New York City native, Kagan did not understand the importance of hunting to his constituents. Kagan initially offered to go hunting with Risch before promising instead to go hunting with Scalia if confirmed. According to Kagan, Scalia laughed when she told him of the promise and took her to his hunting club for the first of several hunting trips.[155] Kagan is known to spend time with longtime friends from law school and her stint in the Clinton administration rather than attending Washington, D.C. social events she is invited to as a justice.[154]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Princeton student body president, and future Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, was one of the other students.
  2. ^ Fellowship in memory of Rhodes Scholar from Princeton, Daniel M. Sachs.[24]
  3. ^ In addition to Citizens' United and the four cases she won, the final case she argued as Solicitor General, Robertson v. United States ex rel. Watson, 560 U.S. 272 (2010) was later dismissed in a per curiam opinion.[80]
  4. ^ Specter was first elected to the Senate as a Republican. He changed parties in 2009 but lost the Democratic primary for his seat in May 2010.[96]
  5. ^ For the first time, the Court had three sitting female justices: Kagan, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor.
  6. ^ Kagan's confirmation brought the number of sitting Jewish justices to three.[106]

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Sources

External links

  • Elena Kagan at Ballotpedia
  • Issue positions and quotes at OnTheIssues
  • Elena Kagan Through the Years – slideshow by ABC News
  • Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Supreme Court Associate Justice Nomination Hearing on Elena Kagan in July 2010 United States Government Publishing Office
Academic offices
Preceded by Dean of Harvard Law School
2003–2009
Succeeded by
Legal offices
Preceded by Solicitor General of the United States
2009–2010
Succeeded by
Preceded by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
2010–present
Incumbent
U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial)
Preceded byas Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Order of precedence of the United States
as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
Succeeded byas Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

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This article is about the U S Supreme Court justice For the Russian writer with the same birth name see Elena Rzhevskaya Elena Kagan ˈ k eɪ ɡ e n KAY guhn born April 28 1960 is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10 2010 and has served since August 7 2010 Kagan is the fourth woman to become a member of the Court Elena KaganOfficial portrait 2013Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United StatesIncumbentAssumed office August 7 2010Nominated byBarack ObamaPreceded byJohn Paul Stevens45th Solicitor General of the United StatesIn office March 19 2009 May 17 2010PresidentBarack ObamaDeputyNeal Katyal 1 Preceded byEdwin Kneedler 2 acting Succeeded byNeal Katyal 1 acting 11th Dean of Harvard Law SchoolIn office July 1 2003 March 19 2009Preceded byRobert ClarkSucceeded byMartha Minow 3 Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy CouncilIn office 1997 2000PresidentBill ClintonPreceded byJeremy Ben Ami 4 Succeeded byEric Liu 5 Personal detailsBorn 1960 04 28 April 28 1960 age 62 New York City U S EducationPrinceton University AB Worcester College Oxford MPhil Harvard University JD SignatureElena Kagan s voice source source Elena Kagan s opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on her nomination to the Supreme CourtRecorded June 28 2010Kagan was born and raised in New York City After graduating from Princeton University Worcester College Oxford and Harvard Law School she clerked for a federal Court of Appeals judge and for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall She began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel and later as a policy adviser under President Bill Clinton After a nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D C Circuit which expired without action she became a professor at Harvard Law School and was later named its first female dean In 2009 Kagan became the first female solicitor general of the United States President Obama later nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy arising from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens The United States Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 63 37 As of 2022 she is the most recent justice appointed without any prior judicial experience She is considered part of the Court s liberal wing but tends to be one of the more moderate justices of that group She has written the majority opinion in some landmark cases such as Cooper v Harris Chiafalo v Washington and Kisor v Wilkie as well as several notable dissenting opinions such as in Rucho v Common Cause West Virginia v EPA Brnovich v DNC Janus v AFSCME and Seila Law v CFPB Contents 1 Early life 2 Education 3 Career 3 1 Early career 3 2 Clinton administration 3 3 Academia 3 4 Solicitor General 3 5 Supreme Court 3 5 1 Nomination 3 5 2 Confirmation hearings 3 5 3 Jurisprudence 3 5 3 1 First Amendment 3 5 3 2 Sixth Amendment 3 5 3 3 Gerrymandering 3 5 3 4 Voting rights 3 5 3 5 Environment 3 5 4 Writing style 3 5 5 Other activities 4 Personal life 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 Sources 9 External linksEarly lifeKagan was born on April 28 1960 in Manhattan the second of three children 6 7 of Robert Kagan an attorney who represented tenants trying to remain in their homes and Gloria Gittelman Kagan who taught at Hunter College Elementary School 8 9 Both her parents were the children of Russian Jewish immigrants 9 Kagan has two brothers Marc and Irving 10 Kagan and her family lived in a third floor apartment at West End Avenue and 75th Street 11 and attended Lincoln Square Synagogue 12 She was independent and strong willed in her youth and according to a former law partner of her father s clashed with her Orthodox rabbi Shlomo Riskin over aspects of her bat mitzvah 11 She had strong opinions about what a bat mitzvah should be like which didn t parallel the wishes of the rabbi her father s colleague said 13 Kagan and Riskin negotiated a solution Riskin had never performed a ritual bat mitzvah before 12 She felt very strongly that there should be ritual bat mitzvah in the synagogue no less important than the ritual bar mitzvah This was really the first formal bat mitzvah we had he said 12 Kagan asked to read from the Torah on a Saturday morning as the boys did but ultimately read from the Book of Ruth on a Friday night 12 She now practices Conservative Judaism 12 Kagan s childhood friend Margaret Raymond recalled that she was a teenage smoker but not a partier 11 On Saturday nights Raymond and Kagan were more apt to sit on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and talk 11 Kagan also loved literature and reread Jane Austen s Pride and Prejudice every year 11 In her 1977 Hunter College High School yearbook she is pictured in a judge s robe and holding a gavel 14 Next to the photo is a quotation from former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter Government is itself an art one of the subtlest of arts 15 Education Kagan graduates from Harvard Law School in 1986 Kagan attended Hunter College High School where her mother taught The school had a reputation as one of the most elite learning institutions for high school girls and attracted students from all over New York City Kagan emerged as one of the school s more outstanding students 16 She was elected president of the student government and served on a student faculty consultative committee 17 Kagan then attended Princeton University graduating in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in history 18 She was particularly drawn to American history and archival research 19 She wrote a senior thesis under historian Sean Wilentz titled To the Final Conflict Socialism in New York City 1900 1933 In it she wrote Through its own internal feuding then the SP Socialist Party exhausted itself forever The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who more than half a century after socialism s decline still wish to change America 20 Wilentz says Kagan did not mean to defend socialism noting that she was interested in it To study something is not to endorse it 11 As an undergraduate Kagan also served as editorial chair of The Daily Princetonian 18 21 Along with eight other students a she penned a Declaration of the Campaign for a Democratic University It called for a fundamental restructuring of university governance and condemned Princeton s administration for making decisions behind closed doors 22 Despite the liberal tone of The Daily Princetonian s editorials Kagan was politically restrained in her dealings with fellow reporters Her Daily Princetonian colleague Steven Bernstein has said he cannot recall a time in which Kagan expressed her political views 23 He described Kagan s political stances as sort of liberal democratic progressive tradition and everything with lower case 23 In 1980 Kagan received Princeton s Daniel M Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship b one of the highest general awards the university confers This enabled her to study at Worcester College Oxford As part of her graduation requirement Kagan wrote a thesis called The Development and Erosion of the American Exclusionary Rule A Study in Judicial Method It presented a critical look at the exclusionary rule and its evolution on the Supreme Court in particular the Warren Court 25 She earned a Master of Philosophy in Politics at Oxford in 1983 26 In 1983 at age 23 Kagan entered Harvard Law School Her adjustment to Harvard s atmosphere was rocky she received the worst grades of her entire law school career in her first semester Kagan went on to earn an A in 17 of the 21 courses she took at Harvard and was a supervisory editor of the Harvard Law Review 27 She worked as a summer associate at the Wall Street law firm Fried Frank Harris Shriver amp Jacobson where she worked in the litigation department 28 She graduated in 1986 with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude 29 30 Her friend Jeffrey Toobin recalls that Kagan stood out from the start as one with a formidable mind She s good with people At the time the law school was a politically charged and divided place She navigated the factions with ease and won the respect of everyone 31 CareerEarly career After law school Kagan was a law clerk for judge Abner J Mikva of the U S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1987 to 1988 She became one of Mikva s favorite clerks he called her the pick of the litter 32 From 1988 to 1989 Kagan clerked for justice Thurgood Marshall of the U S Supreme Court Marshall said he hired Kagan to help him put the spark back into his opinions as the Court had been undergoing a conservative shift since William Rehnquist became Chief Justice in 1986 33 Marshall nicknamed the 5 foot 3 inch 1 60 metre Kagan Shorty 11 From 1989 to 1991 Kagan was in private practice at the Washington D C law firm Williams amp Connolly 34 As a junior associate she drafted briefs and conducted discovery 35 During her short time at the firm she handled five lawsuits that involved First Amendment or media law issues and libel issues 36 In 1991 Kagan became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School 37 While there she first met Barack Obama a guest lecturer at the school 38 39 While on the UC faculty Kagan published a law review article on the regulation of First Amendment hate speech in the wake of the Supreme Court s ruling in R A V v City of St Paul 40 an article discussing the significance of governmental motive in regulating speech 41 and a review of a book by Stephen L Carter discussing the judicial confirmation process 42 In the first article which became highly influential Kagan argued that the Supreme Court should examine governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases and analyzed historic draft card burning and flag burning cases in light of free speech arguments 43 In 1993 Senator Joe Biden appointed Kagan as a special counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee During this time she worked on Ruth Bader Ginsburg s Supreme Court confirmation hearings 44 Kagan became a tenured professor of law in 1995 37 According to her colleagues Kagan s students complimented and admired her from the beginning and she was granted tenure despite the reservations of some colleagues who thought she had not published enough 11 Clinton administration Kagan in the Oval Office with President Bill Clinton in 1997 during her tenure as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy Kagan served as Associate White House Counsel for Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1996 when Mikva served as White House Counsel She worked on such issues affecting the Clinton administration as the Whitewater controversy the White House travel office controversy and Clinton v Jones 45 From 1997 to 1999 she worked as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council Kagan worked on topics like budget appropriations campaign finance reform and social welfare issues Her work is catalogued in the Clinton Library 46 Kagan coauthored a 1997 memo urging Clinton to support a ban on late term abortions We recommend that you endorse the Daschle amendment in order to sustain your credibility on HR 1122 and prevent Congress from overriding your veto 47 On June 17 1999 Clinton nominated Kagan to the U S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to replace James L Buckley who took senior status in 1996 The Senate Judiciary Committee s Republican Chairman Orrin Hatch scheduled no hearing effectively ending her nomination When the Senate term ended her nomination lapsed as did that of fellow Clinton nominee Allen Snyder 48 49 Academia Kagan as Harvard Law School dean in 2008 Kagan s 2009 official portrait as Harvard Law School dean After her service in the White House and her lapsed judicial nomination Kagan returned to academia in 1999 She initially sought to return to the University of Chicago but she had given up her tenured position during her extended stint in the Clinton Administration and the school chose not to rehire her reportedly due to doubts about her commitment to academia 50 Kagan quickly found a position as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School While there she authored a law review article on United States administrative law focusing on the president s role in formulating and influencing federal administrative law The article was honored as the year s top scholarly article by the American Bar Association s Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice 51 In 2001 Kagan was named a full professor at Harvard Law School and in 2003 she was named dean of the Law School by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers 52 She succeeded Robert C Clark who had served as dean for over a decade The focus of her tenure was on improving student satisfaction Efforts included constructing new facilities and reforming the first year curriculum as well as aesthetic changes and creature comforts such as free morning coffee She has been credited for a consensus building leadership style that defused the school s previous ideological discord 53 54 55 As dean Kagan inherited a 400 million capital campaign Setting the Standard in 2003 It ended in 2008 with a record breaking 476 million raised 19 more than the original goal 56 Kagan made a number of prominent new hires increasing the size of the faculty considerably Her coups included hiring legal scholar Cass Sunstein away from the University of Chicago 57 and Lawrence Lessig away from Stanford 58 She also made an effort to hire conservative scholars such as former Bush administration official Jack Goldsmith for the traditionally liberal leaning faculty 54 59 According to Kevin Washburn then dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law Kagan transformed Harvard Law School from a harsh environment for students to one that was much more student focused 55 During her deanship Kagan upheld a decades old policy barring military recruiters from the Office of Career Services because she felt the military s Don t Ask Don t Tell policy discriminated against gays and lesbians According to Campus Progress As dean Kagan supported a lawsuit intended to overturn the Solomon Amendment so military recruiters might be banned from the grounds of schools like Harvard When a federal appeals court ruled The Pentagon could not withhold funds she banned the military from Harvard s campus once again The case was challenged in the Supreme Court which ruled the military could indeed require schools to allow recruiters if they wanted to receive federal money Kagan though she allowed the military back simultaneously urged students to demonstrate against Don t Ask Don t Tell 60 61 In October 2003 Kagan sent an email to students and faculty deploring that military recruiters had shown up on campus in violation of this policy The email read in part This action causes me deep distress I abhor the military s discriminatory recruitment policy 62 She also wrote that it was a profound wrong a moral injustice of the first order 62 From 2005 to 2008 Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute She received a 10 000 stipend for her service 63 By early 2007 Kagan was a finalist for the presidency of Harvard University after Lawrence Summers s resignation the previous year The position ultimately went to Drew Gilpin Faust instead Kagan was reportedly disappointed and law school students threw her a party to express their appreciation for her leadership 64 Solicitor General On January 5 2009 President elect Barack Obama announced he would nominate Kagan to be Solicitor General 65 66 She was vetted for the position of Deputy Attorney General before her selection as Solicitor General 67 At the time of her nomination Kagan had never argued a case before any court 68 At least two previous solicitors general Robert Bork and Kenneth Starr had no previous Supreme Court appearances 69 The two main questions senators had for Kagan during her confirmation hearings were whether she would defend statutes that she personally opposed and whether she was qualified to be Solicitor General given her lack of courtroom experience 70 Kagan testified that she would defend laws such as the Defense of Marriage Act pursuant to which states were not required to recognize same sex marriages originating in other states if there is any reasonable basis to do so 71 The Senate confirmed her on March 19 2009 by a vote of 61 to 31 72 She was the first woman to hold the position 73 Upon taking office Kagan pledged to defend any statute as long as there was a colorable argument to be made regardless of her personal opinions 70 As Solicitor General Kagan s job was to act as the lawyer for the United States and defend legislation and executive actions in appeals before the Supreme Court 73 44 Thus the arguments she made as Solicitor General were not necessarily indicative of her personal beliefs 73 Kagan s first appearance before the Supreme Court was on September 9 2009 one month before the typical start of a new term in October in the re argument of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission 558 U S 310 2010 74 During argument she asked the Court to uphold a 1990 precedent that allowed the government to restrict corporations use of their treasuries to campaign for or against political candidates As an alternative argument Kagan further contended that if the Court would not uphold precedent it should keep its ruling narrowly focused on corporations that resembled the petitioning organization Citizens United rather than reconsidering the constitutionality of broader restrictions on corporate campaign finance 74 75 76 In a 5 4 decision the Court overturned precedent and allowed corporations to spend freely in elections a major defeat for the Obama administration 77 During her 15 months as Solicitor General Kagan argued six cases before the Supreme Court 78 The Washington Post described her style during argument as confident and conversational 73 She helped win four cases Salazar v Buono 559 U S 700 2010 United States v Comstock 560 U S 126 2010 Holder v Humanitarian Law Project 561 U S 1 2010 and Free Enterprise Fund v Public Company Accounting Oversight Board 561 U S 477 2010 79 c Supreme Court Nomination Main article Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination Kagan meets with then President Obama in the Oval Office April 2010 a month before nominating her to the U S Supreme Court source source source source source source source source source source source source track Obama nominates Kagan to be an Associate Justice for the United States Supreme Court Before Obama s election Kagan was the subject of media speculation as a potential Supreme Court nominee if a Democratic president were elected in 2008 81 Obama had his first Supreme Court vacancy to fill in 2009 when Associate Justice David H Souter announced his upcoming retirement 82 Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod later recounted that during the search for a new justice Antonin Scalia told him he hoped Obama would nominate Kagan because of her intelligence 83 On May 13 2009 the Associated Press reported that Obama was considering Kagan among others 84 On May 26 2009 Obama announced that he had chosen Sonia Sotomayor 85 On April 9 2010 Justice John Paul Stevens announced he would retire at the start of the Court s summer 2010 recess triggering new speculation about potential replacements and Kagan was once again considered a contender 86 In a Fresh Dialogues interview Jeffrey Toobin a Supreme Court analyst and Kagan s friend and law school classmate 87 speculated that she would be Obama s nominee describing her as very much an Obama type person a moderate Democrat a consensus builder 88 This alarmed some liberals and progressives who worried that replacing Stevens with Kagan risks moving the Court to the right perhaps substantially to the right 89 On May 10 2010 Obama nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court 90 The deans of over one third of the country s law schools 69 people in total endorsed the nomination in an open letter in early June It lauded what it called her coalition building skills and understanding of both doctrine and policy as well as her written record of legal analysis 91 Confirmation hearings Kagan Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts before her investiture ceremony October 1 2010 Kagan right then a Supreme Court nominee meets with U S Senator Jeanne Shaheen Kagan s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee began on June 28 92 As they began Kagan was expected to be confirmed with Senator John Cornyn calling her justice to be 93 During the hearings she demonstrated a deep knowledge of Supreme Court cases expounding upon cases senators mentioned in their questions to her without taking notes on the questions A number of Democratic senators criticized recent decisions of the court as activist but Kagan avoided joining in their criticisms 94 Like many prior nominees including Chief Justice John Roberts she declined to answer whether she thought particular cases were correctly decided or how she would vote on particular issues 94 95 Senators Jon Kyl and Arlen Specter d criticized her evasiveness Specter said it obscured the way justices actually ruled once on the Court 95 He noted that Kagan published an article in the University of Chicago Law Review in 1995 in which she criticized the evasiveness she came to practice 97 93 Republican senators criticized Kagan s background as more political than judicial she responded by promising to be impartial and fair 92 On July 20 2010 the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13 6 to recommend Kagan s confirmation to the full Senate On August 5 the full Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 63 37 98 The voting was largely along party lines with five Republicans Richard Lugar Judd Gregg Lindsey Graham Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe supporting her and one Democrat Ben Nelson opposing 99 Kagan s swearing in ceremony took place on August 7 2010 at the White House Chief Justice John Roberts administered the prescribed constitutional and judicial oaths of office at which time she became the 112th justice 100th associate justice of the Supreme Court 100 101 She is the first person appointed to the Court without any prior experience as a judge since William Rehnquist and Lewis F Powell Jr who both became members in 1972 102 103 104 She is the fourth female justice in the court s history e and the eighth Jewish justice 105 f Ideologically Kagan is part of the Supreme Court s liberal wing 107 108 109 she voted with the liberal bloc in King v Burwell 576 U S 988 2015 finding that Obamacare s subsidies and individual mandate are constitutional and in Obergefell v Hodges 576 U S 644 2015 which prohibits states from outlawing same sex marriage 110 In 2018 Slate observed that Kagan had crossed ideological lines on multiple cases during the preceding term and considered her to be part of a centrist bloc along with Justices Roberts Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy 111 Still FiveThirtyEight observed that Kagan voted with her more liberal peers Ginsburg and Sotomayor over 90 of the time 112 Also during the 2017 18 term Kagan most commonly agreed with Breyer they voted together in 93 of cases She agreed least often with Justice Samuel Alito in 58 82 of cases 113 Because of her service as solicitor general Kagan recused herself from 28 out of the 78 cases heard during her first year on the Court to avoid conflicts of interest 114 In 2017 she recused herself from the immigrant detention case Jennings v Rodriguez because she authorized a filing in the case when she was solicitor general 115 Kagan was the circuit justice the justice responsible for handling emergency requests for the Sixth and Seventh Circuits 116 After Brett Kavanaugh s confirmation she was assigned to the Ninth Circuit the largest US circuit court by area It includes Alaska Arizona California Guam Hawaii Idaho Oregon Montana Nevada the Northern Mariana Islands and Washington state 117 116 Jurisprudence Kagan s first opinion as a justice Ransom v FIA Card Services was a statutory interpretation case where the Court was tasked with determining what income a debtor was allowed to shield from creditors in bankruptcy 118 In an 8 1 decision she held that the Chapter 13 Bankruptcy statute precludes a debtor from taking an allowance for car related expenses if the debtor owns the car outright and does not make loan or lease payments She reasoned the word applicable was key to the statute and debtors could only take allowances for car related costs that applied 119 120 Kagan wrote the majority opinion in Kimble v Marvel Entertainment LLC In the 6 3 decision in favor of Marvel she held that a patentee cannot receive royalties after the patent has expired 121 Her opinion included several references to Spider Man 122 First Amendment John Roberts Stephen Breyer Kagan and Neil Gorsuch at President Donald Trump s 2018 State of the Union Address Kagan s first dissent came in the First Amendment case Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v Winn 563 U S 125 2011 123 Writing for the liberal wing she took issue with the majority s creation of an exception to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment 123 The majority held that Arizona taxpayers cannot challenge tax credits for those who donate to groups that provide scholarships to religious schools drawing a distinction between the way the Court treats tax credits and grants 123 124 Kagan deemed this distinction arbitrary because tax credits and grants can be used to achieve the same objectives She viewed the majority s decision as creating a loophole for governments to fund religion 123 In another Establishment Clause case Town of Greece v Galloway 572 U S 565 2014 Kagan wrote a dissent arguing that a prayer at a town council meeting failed to treat all Americans the same regardless of religion 125 Greece involved a town in New York inviting chaplains for several years all Christian to give a prayer before town council meetings 126 Unlike Marsh v Chambers 463 U S 783 1983 where the Supreme Court had permitted a state legislature to open with a prayer Kagan noted the board in Greece was a forum for ordinary citizens 127 She argued the use of prayer showed a preference for a particular religion and thus violated Americans First Amendment rights 127 Sixth Amendment Kagan dissented in Luis v United States 578 U S 2016 where the five justice majority held that the pretrial freezing of untainted assets not traced back to criminal activity was a violation of a defendant s Sixth Amendment right to counsel when those assets were needed to retain counsel of the defendant s choosing 128 The defendant Sila Luis had been charged with Medicare fraud in which prosecutors alleged he illegally charged 45 million for unneeded services The prosecutors asked a judge to freeze 2 million of Luis s assets which Luis said she needed to pay legal bills after she had already spent most of the 45 million she made from the alleged scheme 129 An earlier Supreme Court case United States v Monsanto 491 U S 600 1989 held that a court could freeze a defendant s assets pretrial including funds obtained through the alleged sale of drugs even when those assets were being used to hire an attorney 130 The majority sought to distinguish their holding in Luis from Monsanto based upon the nature of the funds being frozen Luis s funds were not directly linked to her crime and Monsanto s funds were 128 130 Kennedy dissented in Luis because he did not think criminal defendants should be treated differently based on how quickly they spent their illegal proceeds Kagan agreed with Kennedy that the Court s decision created inequity and drew an arbitrary distinction but further opined that Monsanto might have been wrongly decided 130 She suggested she would be willing to overturn such precedent in the future but declined to do so in the case at bar because Luis had not sought that relief 128 130 129 Her vote thus rested on procedural grounds as she expressed skepticism that the government should be able to freeze the assets of a criminal defendant not yet convicted and thus still benefiting from the presumption of innocence by merely showing probable cause that the property will be subject to forfeiture 130 Gerrymandering Kagan wrote for the majority in Cooper v Harris 581 U S 2017 striking down the configuration of two of North Carolina s congressional districts 131 The Court held the districts boundaries were unconstitutional because they relied excessively on race and did not pass the strict scrutiny standard of review 132 133 134 In a footnote Kagan set forth a new principle that congressional districts drawn with race as the dominant factor may be found to be an unlawful racial gerrymander even if they have another goal such as sorting voters by political affiliation 133 Applying this principle to the facts of the case the Court unanimously struck down North Carolina s District 1 where state lawmakers had increased the state s black voting age population by 4 1 even though the black population had already been able to elect preferred candidates before the district lines were redrawn 132 The increase of black voters in District 1 resulted in a decrease of black voters in other districts 134 The Court also struck down District 12 by a vote of 5 3 for similar shifts in its racial composition The dissent argued that those challenging the validity of the district had not proved that race caused the change in District 12 132 Kagan quoted Court precedent that race must only be a predominant consideration and that challengers did not need to prove politics was not a motivating factor 132 133 In June 2019 Kagan dissented in Rucho v Common Cause a 5 4 ruling that held that partisan gerrymandering is a non justiciable claim Kagan wrote Of all times to abandon the Court s duty to declare the law this was not the one The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government Part of the Court s role in that system is to defend its foundations None is more important than free and fair elections With respect but deep sadness I dissent 135 Ginsburg Breyer and Sotomayor joined her dissent Voting rights In Brnovich v DNC Kagan wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Breyer and Sotomayor She would have struck down the Arizona voting laws that throw out votes that are cast out of precinct and ban ballot harvesting Kagan wrote that African American Latino and Native American voters are disproportionately likely to have their votes thrown out for being out of precinct compared to White voters She concluded The law that confronted one of this country s most enduring wrongs pledged to give every American of every race an equal chance to participate in our democracy and now stands as the crucial tool to achieve that goal That law of all laws deserves the sweep and power Congress gave it That law of all laws should not be diminished by this Court 136 Environment Joined by Justices Breyer and Sotomayor Kagan dissented in West Virginia v EPA which struck down the proposed Clean Power Plan She wrote It is EPA that s the Environmental Protection Agency in case the majority forgot acting to address the greatest environmental challenge of our time So too there is nothing special about the Plan s who fossil fuel fired power plants In Utility Air we thought EPA s regulation of churches and schools highly unusual But fossil fuel fired plants Those plants pollute a lot and so they have long lived under the watchful eye of EPA That was true even before EPA began regulating carbon dioxide Kagan concluded The subject matter of the regulation here makes the Court s intervention all the more troubling Whatever else this Court may know about it does not have a clue about how to address climate change And let s say the obvious The stakes here are high Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants carbon dioxide emissions The Court appoints itself instead of Congress or the expert agency the decision maker on climate policy I cannot think of many things more frightening Respectfully I dissent 137 138 Writing style In her first term on the Court Kagan did not write any separate opinions and wrote the fewest opinions of any justice She wrote only majority opinions or dissents that more senior justices assigned to her and in which she and a group of justices agreed upon a rationale for deciding the case This tendency to write for a group rather than herself made it difficult to discern her own views or where she might lean in future cases 139 She wrote the fewest opinions for the terms from 2011 through 2014 tying with Kennedy in 2011 and 2013 140 Kagan s writing has been characterized as conversational employing a range of rhetorical styles 141 She has said that she approaches writing on the Court like she used to approach the classroom with numerous strategies to engage the reader 142 Her opinions use examples and analogies to make them more accessible to a broad audience 139 143 Other activities The first four female U S Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O Connor Sonia Sotomayor Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Kagan October 2010 O Connor is not wearing a robe because she had retired before the picture was taken Like other justices Kagan makes public appearances when she is not hearing cases 144 In her first four years on the Court she made at least 20 public appearances 145 Kagan tends to choose speaking engagements that allow her to speak to students 144 Time magazine named Kagan one of its Time 100 most influential people for 2013 Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O Connor wrote the article on Kagan calling her an incisive legal thinker and excellent communicator 146 That same year a painting of the four women to have served as Supreme Court justices Kagan Sotomayor Ginsburg and O Connor was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D C 147 In 2018 Kagan received the Marshall Wythe Medallion from William amp Mary Law School 148 and an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Hunter College 149 Personal lifeKagan has never married During her confirmation a photo of her playing softball which is sometimes characterized in popular culture as unfeminine led to unsubstantiated claims that Kagan was a lesbian 150 Her friends have criticized the rumors Kagan s law school roommate Sarah Walzer said I ve known her for most of her adult life and I know she s straight 151 Kagan s Harvard colleagues and friends have characterized her as a good conversationalist warm with a good sense of humor 152 Before joining the Supreme Court she was known to play poker and smoke cigars 152 153 Early in her tenure as a justice Kagan began socializing with several of her new colleagues 154 She attended the opera with Ruth Bader Ginsburg had dinner with Sonia Sotomayor attended legal events with Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas and went hunting with Antonin Scalia 154 The hunting trips stemmed from a promise Kagan made to U S Senator Jim Risch of Idaho during a meeting before her confirmation Risch expressed concern that as a New York City native Kagan did not understand the importance of hunting to his constituents Kagan initially offered to go hunting with Risch before promising instead to go hunting with Scalia if confirmed According to Kagan Scalia laughed when she told him of the promise and took her to his hunting club for the first of several hunting trips 155 Kagan is known to spend time with longtime friends from law school and her stint in the Clinton administration rather than attending Washington D C social events she is invited to as a justice 154 See alsoBarack Obama Supreme Court candidates Bill Clinton judicial appointment controversies Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Seat 4 List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Seat 10 Notes Princeton student body president and future Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer was one of the other students Fellowship in memory of Rhodes Scholar from Princeton Daniel M Sachs 24 In addition to Citizens United and the four cases she won the final case she argued as Solicitor General Robertson v United States ex rel Watson 560 U S 272 2010 was later dismissed in a per curiam opinion 80 Specter was first elected to the Senate as a Republican He changed parties in 2009 but lost the Democratic primary for his seat in May 2010 96 For the first time the Court had three sitting female justices Kagan Ginsburg and Sotomayor Kagan s confirmation brought the number of sitting Jewish justices to three 106 References a b Goldstein Tom August 13 2010 Anticipating the next 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Washington The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Archived from the original on January 14 2019 Retrieved January 13 2019 Pals from student days remember a determined Elena Kagan CNN May 11 2010 Archived from the original on November 9 2012 Retrieved May 22 2010 Manhattan Renders Its Verdict on Court Pick Fordham Law Newsroom May 11 2010 Archived from the original on March 14 2012 Retrieved June 10 2011 Greene Meg 2014 Elena Kagan A Biography Greenwood Biographies p 23 ISBN 9781440828980 Greene 2014 p 25 a b Elena Kagan Supreme Court bound NBC News May 10 2010 p 4 Archived from the original on December 1 2018 Retrieved November 30 2018 Mascarenhas Rohan May 11 2010 U S Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan s writings views while at Princeton to be examined NJ com The Star Ledgar Archived from the original on January 19 2019 Retrieved January 18 2019 DeLong Brad May 17 2010 Elena Kagan s Undergraduate Thesis Grasping Reality with Both Hands Delong typepad com Archived from the original on June 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First Amendment Doctrine The University of Chicago Law Review 63 Iss 2 Article 2 2 413 517 doi 10 2307 1600235 JSTOR 1600235 Archived from the original on December 17 2018 Retrieved December 16 2018 Kagan Elena 1995 Review of The Confirmation Mess The University of Chicago Law Review 62 2 919 942 doi 10 2307 1600153 JSTOR 1600153 Kagan Elena Spring 1996 Private Speech Public Purpose The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine PDF The University of Chicago Law Review 63 2 413 517 doi 10 2307 1600235 JSTOR 1600235 Archived PDF from the original on August 23 2016 Retrieved June 28 2010 via Scotusblog com a b Elena Kagan Fast Facts CNN February 19 2013 Archived from the original on April 4 2018 Retrieved April 4 2018 Greene 2014 p 94 Elena Kagan Collection clintonlibrary gov Archived from the original on December 19 2014 Retrieved July 22 2013 Jill Zeman Bleed Kagan in 97 urged Clinton to ban late abortions Archived October 16 2020 at the Wayback Machine NBC News May 10 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SCOTUS Justices You Might Not Know LexTalk www lextalk com Archived from the original on November 24 2018 Retrieved November 21 2018 a b c Barens Robert September 25 2011 Verdict on Kagan s first year on Supreme Court The Washington Post Archived from the original on November 24 2018 Retrieved September 8 2018 Eaton Elizabeth S August 31 2016 Justice Elena Kagan talks about her warm relationship with her late colleague Antonin Scalia azcentral Retrieved November 23 2018 SourcesElena Kagan at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center External linksElena Kagan at Ballotpedia Issue positions and quotes at OnTheIssues Elena Kagan Through the Years slideshow by ABC News Appearances on C SPAN Supreme Court Associate Justice Nomination Hearing on Elena Kagan in July 2010 United States Government Publishing OfficeAcademic officesPreceded byRobert C Clark Dean of Harvard Law School2003 2009 Succeeded byMartha MinowLegal officesPreceded byEdwin KneedlerActing Solicitor General of the United States2009 2010 Succeeded byNeal KatyalActingPreceded byJohn Paul Stevens Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States2010 present IncumbentU S order of precedence ceremonial Preceded bySonia Sotomayoras Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Order of precedence of the United Statesas Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Succeeded byNeil Gorsuchas Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Elena Kagan amp oldid 1145402504, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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