| Elena Kagan (born April 28, 1960) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and will assume office from August 7, 2010. She will become the 112th Justice and the 4th female-justice in the history of the Supreme Court. Prior to her nomination as Associate Justice she held the post of the Solicitor General of the USA (assistant to the Attorney General of USA, 2009-2010).
Her candidacy was nominated by the US President Barrack Obama on May 10, 2010 as a replacement to retiring John Paul Stevens. Her nomination was upheld by the US Senate on August 5, 2010 by a 63 to 37 vote.
Right from the beginning, approval of the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court by the US Senate, did not arise doubts. Long discussions which took place in July in the Senate Committee on legal issues did not bring any surprises and did not deliver compromising evidence that would thwart the nomination of Elena Kagan to her Republican opponents.
The new member of the Supreme Court of the United States was born the Manhattan West Side in 1960. Her mother Gloria, with the maiden name of Gittelman, was a teacher and father Robert an attorney.
Kagan, who practices Conservative Judaism, studied at Princeton, Oxford and in the law faculty at Harvard University and subsequently became its dean.
She was appointed to the Dean post by the President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, who is presently the leading adviser to Barack Obama on economy.
During Bill Clinton’s term, the new member of the Supreme Court was an associate White House counsel and an advisor to the president. After assuming office, Obama appointed Kagan as Solicitor General of his administration.
Conservative publicists call Elena Kagan as supporter of new restrictions on arms and remind people that she piled up the National Rifle Association in one heap along with the Ku Klux Klan.
They significantly note that while studying at Princeton University, she had written a thesis on socialistic movements in New York in the beginning of 20th century. The research supervisor of Kagan, history professor Sean Wilentz, stated after her nomination to Supreme Court that writing a thesis does not mean that she is a socialist.
“Studying something does not mean that it should be supported” says Wilentz, who specialized on racial and class relations in America during that early period.
As Obama, Kagan is also one of the rare American lawyers, who have very few printed works. As far as it is known, Barack Obama does not a have a work in print and Kagan has only five.
As Americans express, she has left a minimum “paper trace”. It, however was enough to disturb the critics of Kagan, who wanted to prove that she is a captive of ideological predilections and not in a state to judge unbiased.
In 1996 she, for example, had written an article in a law magazine at Chicago University, in which she stated that the government has the right to limit the freedom of speech if it considers that freedom of speech is abused with “harmful purposes”.
Critics are outraged that this contradicts the First amendment to the constitution of the USA, but Kagan proved that the government has the right to restrain freedom of speech provided that it is guided by good intentions.
During the present alignment of forces in Senate, the nomination of Kagan was doomed to be approved since she is affable, witty and published very little, so the Republicans had almost nothing to find fault with.
Apart from this, the Republicans did not act as a single unit. One of them, Senator Suzan Collins of the State of Maine stated that she will vote for Kagan, since Kagan has “enough intelligence, experience, temperament, decency and a world-outlook” to be a member of the highest judicial system.
Senator Republican Richard Shelby on the other hand, summarized the opinion of the majority of the party stating that: “Simply speaking, Kagan is a political activist but not a lawyer”.
Judging by the fact that Kagan was photographed in a judge’s gown, from childhood she aimed at the elite judicial class. Therefore her entire life, she diligently avoided public benchmark judgments and hence, it was very difficult to point at her for something. She was never a judge, she did not pronounce a judgment during any legal proceeding and opponents from the very beginning reproached her for lack of experience.
Republicans are annoyed with the fact that being dean of the Harvard faculty of law, Kagan refused entry of Pentagon representatives into the University premises, who wanted to recruit her student to be future military attorneys.
Kagan explained that by not allowing the gays to serve, military recruiters are openly showing discrimination. In such cases, the so-called Solomon Amendment, passed by the congress, authorizes military recruiters to stop the federal funding to an educational institution, which in the case of Harvard, exceeded 300 million USD per annum.
Her opponents proved that Kagan is a person with liberal views and in a case of confirmation from Senate, she will push the Supreme Court too far to the left.
For many years in this sense, her appointment in the future can probably become one of the most significant elements of the Obama heritage.
The US Supreme Court consists of nine members. Presently out of nine, four are liberals and four conservators and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, who scurries between them, but recently has shown an inclination towards right side.
Kagan, who celebrated her 50th birthday in April, 2010 can comfortably sit in the highest judicial body of the United States for several decades. Other achievements of Obama will be cancelled or washed away sooner or later, but members of the Supreme Court are appointed for a life term.
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Elena Kagan became the fourth woman to sit on the highest US court Saturday after she took the oath as the 112th Supreme Court justice.
Kagan pledged to "faithfully and impartially" administer justice to people from all walks to life as she took the judicial oath from Chief Justice John Roberts.
She also promised to "work my hardest and try my best to fulfill these commitments and serve this country I love."
Though never seriously in doubt, her confirmation to the lifetime post gave President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies a much-needed victory before November midterm elections in which they are expected to suffer heavy losses.
