I will start out by saying I probably would not support any nominee from this President. I would not trust Obama to pick out my gardener so it goes without saying that I do not trust his picks for the Supreme Court. He is not a man of good character, nor does he keep counsel with those of good character so I do not expect that to change. I will say that it is an interesting pick so let’s look at why he picked her. The dumbest reason I have heard so far was one liberal in an article was quoted as saying that “people like her”. Unfortunately that does not qualify someone for the Supreme Court, but this is Obama and Axelrod so I am sure that was one of the criteria.
The obvious reasons are that she is a liberal, she conforms to Obama’s apathy criteria for a judge, she is Jewish (recent polls have shown that Obama has lost over half his Jewish support, which should be no surprise), and she has little to no paper trail.
My initial opinion is that the Senate should not confirm her. My reasons are not just limited to Obama nominated her, but what I have found out so far on the net. Let’s start with the paper trail.
The reason that there is such a small paper trail is that Elena Kagan has never sat behind the bench at any level. I repeat. She has never been a judge at any level of government. She also has little to no experience as a courtroom lawyer. Kagan spent two years as a private lawyer after law school and has served the last 14 months as the Solicitor General. That’s it. She has spent her entire career in academia yet she has not even published many papers. So in summary, she has no experience as a judge, 3 years of experience as a lawyer, and very few papers to analyze how she believes judges should interpret the Constitution. She simply does not have the appropriate experience for the job and it is irresponsible for Obama to try to put her there. We cannot make a decision simply based upon what Kagan says during the confirmation hearing. We saw Sotomayor back off of every liberal statement and judgment she ever made during her hearing and unfortunately many people fell for it. Sadly, you cannot trust Judges during these hearings anymore.
A second area we can look at is Elena Kagan’s tenure as Dean of Harvard Law School. During this time she whitewashed a scandal at the school concerning plagiarism by two liberal law professors. These two professors were not punished at all for an offense that an undergraduate would have been suspended or expelled for. This decision was obviously made with some type of bias and not according to the written law. This incident shows serious issues with judgment and character and her ability to administer the law. If she cannot do the right thing in this situation, why should we trust her on the highest court? I brought the exact same point up with Obama and his inability to change the corrupt culture in Chicago and it turns out that was a valid point. As a side note, it should come as no surprise that fellow Obama appointee Larry Summers was also involved with this cover up.
There is another incident during her time at Harvard that I am sure will be brought up. This was her attempt to ban military recruiters from Harvard’s campus and prevent them from using its career center. In this effort she, along with 40 other liberal law professors, signed a Supreme Court brief against the Solomon Amendment. The Solomon Amendment denies funding to Universities that prevent the military “from gaining access to campuses, or access to students … on campuses, for purposes of military recruiting in a manner that is at least equal in quality and scope to the access to campuses and to students that is provided to any other employer.” The brief was unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court; denied by even the most liberal judges currently in the Supreme Court. This should give you an idea of how liberal she is and her probable agenda. One liberal congressman said that this does not matter because she is not up for Secretary of Defense. I would beg to differ. It reveals a lot about her character, her bias, and how these affected her judgment. In this case it obviously was not about the law.
The last thing for today is…will she be an liberal activist judge. I would say yes. She has zero experience as a judge…I repeat again…zero experience, but she has worked for some. She clerked for both Thurgood Marshall and Abner Mikva. This is her Obama / Chicago connection by the way. Mikva is one of Obama’s political mentors. Kagan and Obama also got their start in Chicago’s corrupt south side and met at the University of Chicago. Considering Obama’s disdain for the Constitution, this gives you more insight into her thinking. But it is actually her writings on Justice Marshall that confirms it.
“For in Justice Marshall’s view, constitutional interpretation demanded, above all else, one thing from the courts: it demanded that the courts show a special solicitude for the despised and disadvantaged. It was the role of the courts, in interpreting the Constitution, to protect the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government — to safeguard the interests of people who had no other champion. The Court existed primarily to fulfill this mission. … At any rate, this was why they sat in Justice Marshall’s vision of the Court and Constitution. And however much some recent Justices have sniped at that vision, it remains a thing of glory.”
“The credit, in other words, belongs to people like Justice Marshall. As the many thousands who waited on the Supreme Court steps well knew, our modern Constitution is his.”
This does it for me, and it should for anyone else as well. She believes in apathy and not the law as written. She is Obama’s type of judge and one that should not be confirmed.
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