SALON

Thursday, May 13, 2010 8:14 PM UTC

Three under-reported facts about Elena Kagan confirmation

And what to watch going forward

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Topics: Elena Kagan, Guantanamo, Lindsey Graham, Obama's Supreme Court nomination, Supreme Court

Three days into the nomination, not much has changed. No Democrat has opposed Elena Kagan; no Republican has endorsed her. No senator or serious commentator has suggested that she won’t be confirmed, or that the nomination should or would be filibustered.

In an effort to break through the mass of coverage, I did want to highlight three points that have gotten some attention, but less than they deserve, because they have the chance to shift the dynamic of the nomination. None will determine whether Kagan will be confirmed, but each is likely to take on more prominence in the coming weeks and could shift some Republican votes.

First, as Nina Totenberg reported, Kagan signed this letter in 2005 strongly protesting Sen. Lindsey Graham’s amendment to limit the Guantánamo Bay detainees’ access to federal courts. This is far more direct evidence of Kagan’s views on executive powers in foreign affairs than the isolated statement in her confirmation hearings that has been invoked as supposedly showing her support for Bush-era policies. The letter should assuage liberal opponents, but raises the question whether Graham and other moderate Republicans may vote against her.

Second, as the New York Times reported, Miguel Estrada unambiguously endorsed Kagan’s confirmation. Estrada is a hero of conservatives, given his treatment when he was nominated by President Bush to the D.C. Circuit. The endorsement gives Democrats and the White House ammunition to argue that Republicans are simply playing politics.

Third, as Jim Oliphant reported, Kagan signed a memo while working in the White House stating that the president should sign an assault weapons ban. And as Greg Stohr of Bloomberg has reported (no link is available), while clerking for Thurgood Marshall, Kagan wrote that she was “not sympathetic” to the claim that the District of Columbia’s handgun ban violates the Second Amendment; that is the claim the Supreme Court accepted in the Heller case. Both statements by Kagan reflected the position of her employers — the White House and Justice Marshall — and her brief statement as a law clerk about the Second Amendment claim (literally a single short sentence) represented the view of every court of appeals. But those statements will almost certainly be enough to cause the NRA, with its considerable influence, to formally oppose the nomination.

More Tom Goldstein.

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Elena Kagan is the 45th Solicitor General of the United States, confirmed in March 2009. Prior to her confirmation, she was the 11th Dean of Harvard Law School. Among her previous positions is a stint at the White House, from 1995-99, where she served as a counselor.
Kagan received her

bachelor's degree, summa cum laude, from Princeton in 1981. She attended Worcester College, Oxford, and then Harvard Law School, where she was supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated magna cum laude in 1986.

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