Dave Hardy points out that Elena Kagan, Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Stevens, doesn’t have much in the way of distinction. I think given this President, a blank slate might be the best we could ask for. We’ll see what comes out in the confirmation hearings, but if we don’t dig up anything damning, I’d say lets roll the dice.
My guess is Obama is picking a nominee without much of a record in an attempt to avoid a nasty confirmation fight leading into the election. The advantage to picking a Justice who has not much of a prior record is there isn’t as much for opponents to attack. The disadvantage is, for Obama, he can’t be as sure she’ll stay solidly liberal. I would suspect she will, and would be surprised if she turned conservative, but let’s not forget that Justice Souter was another such blank slate, and look how that turned out for the GOP.
The GOP seems to have a poor track record with respect to SCOTUS nominations than the Democrats.
Yep. This appointment is wholly political.
Funny … I thought this was about appointing a justice who apolitically interprets the constitution.
She’s going to be a hard core liberal and she’ll be confirmed without any problem. No democrat pick will ever turn out to be conservative on any issue.
Didn’t this woman clerk for Thurgood Marshall?
If I remember that right, and she provided the intellectual help for that dotard to formulate his SCOTUS “decisions”, that would be enough in my eyes to disqualify her.
But I mean that in the nicest, most polite way.
It isn’t like she’s replacing Scalia. Stephens was a solid leader in the liberal wing of the SCOTUS. Pres Obama could replace him with a robot that votes in a 100% liberal manner every time and it wouldn’t really matter much. Given the personal friendship that seems to exist between the two, I’d bet he knows her convictions fairly well so I won’t expect much different. Honestly, I’d prefer that he pick a known intellectual light weight rather than someone who has some credible academic background. The worst case is that she’s liberal (we all know that) AND a strong intellectual leader with excellent legal writing skills for that wing of the court.
I am happy to see someone without a background as a judge. I think the court benefits from having a more diverse legal background. Some of our more notable justices — from all ideological persuasions — were not judges beforehand (John Jay, Earl Warren, Louis Brandeis, come to mind).
Kagan is a diehard liberal and will be an even more consistently knee-jerk liberal vote than Justice Stevens was. So too is anyone else Obama would have considered appointing to the court. Elections have consequences.
The only silver lining I see here is that Kagan’s complete lack of qualification for the job means she may not be as effective as Stevens was at persuading Justice Kennedy or any other future centrists to join her.
Xrlq Said: Kagan is a diehard liberal and will be an even more consistently knee-jerk liberal vote than Justice Stevens was.
So sure about that … are you.
She is only a blank slate in that she has never sat on the bench or tried cases. From everything else I have heard she has a very leftwing political ideology. I think Obama is confident she will stay to the left.