Obama Chooses Kagan for Supreme Court

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May 10, 2010

Obama Chooses Kagan for Supreme Court

President Obama will nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan as the nation's 112th justice, "choosing his own chief advocate before the Supreme Court to join it in ruling on cases critical to his view of the country's future," the New York Times reports.

Why? The Washington Post notes Obama "wants someone who can serve as a counterweight to the intellectual heft of Chief Justice John Roberts. Regardless of how strong a liberal Kagan would prove to be, as a former dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan practically defines legal gravitas."

"She's also a female, which adds to the court's gender diversity. She's young, at 50, which means she could be on the court for a quarter century. And she's never been a judge, which gives her a quality that Obama is known to have been seeking: someone to bring a different sensibility to a court that's currently dominated by judges."

Required reading: Tom Goldstein has an in-depth review of the nomination process and what debates are most likely to appear over the next two or three months. SCOTUSblog also takes a long, long look at Kagan's record and breaks down the likely vote totals in the Senate for and against confirmation.

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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May 10, 2010