Private: Obama Selects Kagan as Supreme Court Nominee

President Obama has made his second Supreme Court nomination since being elected to office and assuming power in early 2009. Obama tapped U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, former Harvard Law School dean to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

If confirmed, Kagan, 50, would be the fourth woman to serve on the centuries-old court. She is also the first nominee in many years to not have any experience as a federal appeals court judge, or for that matter as a judge. As did Justice Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation, Kagan's seating would add professional diversity to the bench. Sotomayor, is the only current justice to have some trial judge experience.

Obama's first nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was seated following the retirement of David Souter, with Republicans claiming that the president should not try nominating anyone much farther to the left. Sotomayor's confirmation hearings where nonetheless marked by some unsurprising acrimonious moments, including a few senators working to paint Sotomayor as a judicial activist, among other things.

Kagan is no stranger to adversity. Her nomination to the federal appeals court in D.C. late in President Clinton's administration was never voted on by the Senate, she found herself thrust into controversies on Harvard's campus, and has faced challenges in and outside the high court as the administration's chief legal advocate.

As dean of the Harvard Law School she battled military recruiters from visiting campus because of the armed service's discrimination against openly gay members. As The New York Times reported, although Kagan "repeatedly criticized ‘don't ask, don't tell,'" she eventually relented in the face of the university possibly losing more than $300 million in federal funds. The Times noted that a federal law, the Solomon Amendment, which would deny federal funds to universities that barred military recruiters from their campuses, "forced many law schools to carve out a military exception to their recruitment policies, which said they would not help employers that discriminated in their hiring practices."

She has also seen criticism even before her nomination to the high court. Some on the left have questioned her stances favoring expanded executive power. During her confirmation hearing for solicitor general, Kagan agreed with a senator that people suspected of financing Al Qaeda should be subject to indefinite detention.

But Kagan also has her supporters, from various political and ideological persuasions.

Charles Fried, the solicitor general for President Ronald Reagan has called her "awesomely intelligent," as The Washington Post noted. Fried told the Los Angeles Times, "Of all the good people Obama is considering, Elena is the really outstanding one." In the same Washington Post article, high-profile attorney and a member of the Federalist Society's Board of Visitors Theodore B. Olson said Kagan "is very, very highly respected by everybody I know." Olson also praised Kagan for being "very gracious" to conservative students and faculty at Harvard Law School.

For more information about Kagan, including biographical and news, analysis and commentary see the ACS Web site here.

Supreme Court