She’s replacing a liberal judge and I don’t view gay marriage as even remotely threatening to Christian marriage, so I’m not bothered. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should have gone the way of the dodo years ago anyway. I watched some really great soldiers in my brigade get the boot or harassed over it.
If anything, I think this just further reinforces my opinion that Christians need to stop spending so much energy trying to control the public sector and focus on loving and helping people instead.

The intertwined elites rings true.
I recall Western Civ. books, diplomats, financial elites and others with the Kagan name. I don’t know all of their familial connections, but I cannot believe that there are not substantial ties of status, wealth and power.
Peace,
Randy Gabrielse

I wonder if Obama is pulling a Harriet Miers here.
Kagan is close to the vest as a political ally without a lot of experience. The left isn’t particularly excited about her, and while everyone can generally guess how she’ll rule on contentious cases, she doesn’t have a track record in that regard.
The fact that the White House proactively denied her sexuality was interesting. Ostensibly, that would be a selling point with the base, so why dismiss it so forcefully? There have also been a dearth of supportive op-eds out of the gate. Friendlies usually have these locked and loaded.
I wonder if Obama is just floating Kagan, hoping to tease out some anti-gay remarks from the right to smooth the nomination of someone like Liu or Wood. If so, will this become the new tactic for presidents tasked with nominating two justices?

@Jeremy
“She’s replacing a liberal judge and I don’t view gay marriage as even remotely threatening to Christian marriage, so I’m not bothered. ”
It’s not her stated opposition to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” that is problematic, but her means of opposing. She leveraged her position as head of an institution to create a rift between her university and the settled law of the land, and was ultimately forced to concede.
This indicates a disinclination to operate within her sphere of influence. This is the primary conservative criticism of liberal jurists, that they use any means necessary to overturn laws they don’t like.

Off-topic, but can someone explain to me the moderation methodology employed here? Are there certain buzzwords that automatically zap comments? Seems random.

kevin s (#5),
I am not sure what the system is – but don’t take it personally. I’ve had comments sent to moderation, dopderbeck has had comments sent to moderation – even Scot has at least once.

“I am not sure what the system is – but don’t take it personally. I’ve had comments sent to moderation, dopderbeck has had comments sent to moderation – even Scot has at least once.”
No worries. Some blogs have certain keywords, or other triggers that relegate comments to purgatory. Other blogs have certain topics you can’t bring up. Just wondered if that was the case.

I wish I knew more to even have a guess what it means to have someone from the east coast legal elite being a judge. I mean, it makes sense to me though I do understand that we should inherently like diversity in the court.
Do we have a description of the childhood and famiy experiences of each of the judges? Sure the education method and crowd they hang with matters, but by and large if you want to be a top notch lawyer don’t you try to go to an elite school?
I just wonder if there is any real substance to that argument.
Dave

“There is a striking mismatch between the White House’s populist rhetoric about seeking a justice with a “keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people” and the reality of the Kagan pick”
This seems like an answer on my “jump to conclusions” mat. She’s educated and comes from a well-off family so she can’t sympathize with the poor and how US law affects the least of these? Please, someone notify Eleanor Roosevelt, Bush Sr. or Jr., JFK, and any other influential US leader from wealth that they’re automatically out of touch…Is it a possibility, sure, is it automatic, not at all.

@DRT
I agree. Sam Alito was the son if Italian immigrants who became teachers. John Roberts came from a middle class background, and is two generations removed from Czechoslovakian immigrants. I very much doubt that his academic experience turned them into callous tyrants.
Harvard and Yale are the best law schools, so that’s where great minds go to learn how to contend with the law (for better or worse) if they have the opportunity. While both law schools are certainly guilty of trading on reputation in the admissions process, the trend isn’t nearly so egregious as it is at the undergraduate level.
I don’t care if you’re an empathetic person, so long as you agree with my philosophy on the role of the courts and the constitution. I don’t think empathy impacting higher court rulings is a good thing generally.

Here’s a good read.
Religious Right Panic Over Kagan?s Sexuality
By Candace Chellew-Hodge
May 10, 2010
http://www.religiondispatches.org/blog/2554/religious_right_panic_over_kagan%E2%80%99s_sexuality/

“Here’s a good read.”
Really? That article takes on some fringe group that has no influence on this issue, and does a bit of jujitsu to make it seem like mainstream evangelical groups have the same approach. That’s a good read?
I suspect that the left will make a bigger deal out of her sexuality than will the right. The goal will be to, well, find some fringe group and make it seem as though that group is reflexive of broader opposition.
If John Roberts or Sam Alito were gay, I strongly doubt they would have lost support among influential advocacy groups for that reason.

Speaking as an academic, I have to say that no single world within our interlocking worlds we call society is as narrowminded and tunnel-visioned as academia. And within academia, deans and administrators are even more obsessed with narrowminded political correctness.
I cannot think of any group of people more out of touch with the average person in America. FDR started a trend to go to “experts” from academia rather than from the broader society. It has been characteristic of the Obama administration from day one–his cabinet has fewer people with real world experience than any administration since FDR. The ones who aren’t from academia are from the non-profit sector, which is another kind of hot-house environment.

That Alito and Roberts had academic experience is apples to Kagan’s oranges. Many lawyers who became judges had some law teaching experience. But Alito and Roberts had years of federal judicial experience. Kagan has nothing but academic and academic administration experience. It’s not family social class background that matters so much as where one has made one’s professional mark. I wouldn’t be unalterably opposed to someone from a business background or a lawyer with courtroom experience but no judicial experience–even that’s more “real world” than is a pure academic or non-profit career.

There shouldn’t be anything to worry about. I trust the President to pick the best person for the job.

“But Alito and Roberts had years of federal judicial experience. Kagan has nothing but academic and academic administration experience.”
True. The academic world is home to the most rigorous set of litmus tests imaginable. Nothing about Kagan impresses me, but she’s not likely to impress the nominal majority of the Supreme Court either. That’s why I’m not sure this is really going to happen.

I am both perplexed and concerned that we may have a new supreme court judge who has no judicial experience whatsoever. None. How can that be? I am also concerned that our whole court will be ivy league educated. Are there no other competent law schools in this country. The whole process smacks of Liberal elitism and I fail to see how this will be good for our country.

I am both perplexed and concerned that we may have a new supreme court judge who has no judicial experience whatsoever. None. How can that be?

A lot of Supreme Court justices have had no prior judicial experience. William Rehnquist didn’t. Eisenhower nominated Earl Warren, who had no judicial experience, as Chief Justice. Hugo Black, Byron White, and Lewis Powell are a few of the many others who had not been judges prior to sitting on the Supreme Court.

As Anderson said, thinking SCJ’s had to have judicial experience is a relatively new thing…last 20 years or so, I think. We’ve had 40 so far that had none whatsoever. I’m not sure how many had very little.

Ask Elena Kagan the following questions, please: Does the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for an American begin at conception? Does human life begin at conception? Does abortion prematurely end the life of an unborn human being?

“Ask Elena Kagan the following questions, please: Does the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for an American begin at conception? Does human life begin at conception? Does abortion prematurely end the life of an unborn human being?”
Obama would not nominate anyone who would answer yes to these questions. He’s pro-choice to the point of supporting partial-birth abortions. There would really be no point to asking these questions. She won’t answer them.

It is more than a little ironic to hear conservative WASPs complain about under representation, of any sort.
It is also ironic that the complaint among conservatives is that Kagan doesn’t have judicial experience, given that they are the ones who blocked her nomination to the D.C. Circuit over 10 years ago. Of course the current Chief Justice had very little judicial experience when nominated.
As an Ivy-educated lawyer, I also don’t understand the criticism based on where she attended school. It is a populist fallacy that lawyers who graduate from such schools are somehow less “in touch” with the common man. That sort of thinking reminds me of populist rejection of well-accepted scientific views, discussed often on this blog.
As Dean at Harvard law, Kagan was also known as a campaigner against political correctness. So the comment above regarding political correctness doesn’t make much sense.
Kagan also has the respect of the bar — particularly those who practice at the appellate level.