Elena Kagan Receives Supreme Court Nomination, Unfounded Criticism
President Obama only nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court a couple of hours ago, but a controversy is already a-brewin’.
First, the basics:
Nominated to replace Justice Stevens, 50-year-old Solicitor General Kagan is known for being sharp and thorough, with a liberal perspective balanced by a talent for mediating between the two parties. Kagan is not a judge, and if nominated would be the first non-judge on the SC in 40 years, and the fourth woman.
Now, the drama:
Michael Steele, the first African American to serve as Republic National Chairman, dug up some rather incriminating evidence against Elena Kagan: She admires Thurgood Marshall. You know, the first African American Supreme Court justice, who was instrumental in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision that mandated the integration of public schools.
What a jerk, right?
In particular, Steele pointed to the following Marshall quote from a 1987 speech:
…the government [the founding fathers] devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.
(He was talking about slavery and women’s rights.)
Apparently, there are two schools of thought about the Constitution. Either it’s a “living document” — as Marshall believed — that must evolve alongside its people or, um, it’s dead, and should be followed to the letter as written in 1776.
Kagan cited Marshall’s observations about the Constitution’s “defective” qualities in 1993 paper. She also wrote the following, describing the justice’s beliefs:
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.
We know scandal, and this ain’t it. Nice try, Steele.
