60 Facts About Justice Kagan

Elena Kagan is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Justice Kagan was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10,2010, and has served since August 7,2010.

Justice Kagan began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel, and later as a policy adviser under President Bill Clinton.

In 2009, Justice Kagan became the first female solicitor general of the United States.

Justice Kagan is considered part of the Court's liberal wing but tends to be one of the more moderate justices of that group.

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Justice Kagan wrote the majority opinion in Cooper v Harris, a landmark case restricting the permissible uses of race in drawing congressional districts.

Justice Kagan was independent and strong-willed in her youth and, according to a former law partner of her father's, clashed with her Orthodox rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, over aspects of her bat mitzvah.

Justice Kagan asked to read from the Torah on a Saturday morning as the boys did, but ultimately read from the Book of Ruth on a Friday night.

Justice Kagan's childhood friend Margaret Raymond recalled that she was a teenage smoker but not a partier.

Justice Kagan attended Hunter College High School, where her mother taught.

Justice Kagan emerged as one of the school's more outstanding students.

Justice Kagan was elected president of the student government and served on a student-faculty consultative committee.

Justice Kagan was particularly drawn to American history and archival research.

Justice Kagan described Kagan's political stances as "sort of liberal, democratic, progressive tradition, and everything with lower case".

In 1980, Kagan received Princeton's Daniel M Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship, one of the highest general awards the university confers.

Justice Kagan earned a Master of Philosophy in Politics at Oxford in 1983.

Justice Kagan went on to earn an A in 17 of the 21 courses she took at Harvard, and was a supervisory editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Justice Kagan navigated the factions with ease, and won the respect of everyone.

Justice Kagan became one of Mikva's favorite clerks; he called her "the pick of the litter".

From 1988 to 1989, Kagan clerked for justice Thurgood Marshall of the US Supreme Court.

In 1991, Justice Kagan became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

Justice Kagan served as Associate White House Counsel for Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1996, when Mikva served as White House Counsel.

Justice Kagan worked on such issues affecting the Clinton administration as the Whitewater controversy, the White House travel office controversy, and Clinton v Jones.

Justice Kagan worked on topics like budget appropriations, campaign finance reform, and social welfare issues.

Justice Kagan initially sought to return to the University of Chicago, but she had given up her tenured position during her extended stint in the Clinton Administration, and the school chose not to rehire her, reportedly due to doubts about her commitment to academia.

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Justice Kagan quickly found a position as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

In 2001, Justice Kagan was named a full professor at Harvard Law School and in 2003 she was named dean of the Law School by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers.

Justice Kagan succeeded Robert C Clark, who had served as dean for over a decade.

Justice Kagan has been credited for a consensus-building leadership style that defused the school's previous ideological discord.

Justice Kagan made a number of prominent new hires, increasing the size of the faculty considerably.

Justice Kagan's coups included hiring legal scholar Cass Sunstein away from the University of Chicago and Lawrence Lessig away from Stanford.

Justice Kagan made an effort to hire conservative scholars, such as former Bush administration official Jack Goldsmith, for the traditionally liberal-leaning faculty.

In October 2003, Justice Kagan sent an email to students and faculty deploring that military recruiters had shown up on campus in violation of this policy.

Justice Kagan wrote that it was "a profound wrong—a moral injustice of the first order".

From 2005 to 2008, Justice Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute.

Justice Kagan was reportedly disappointed, and law school students threw her a party to express their appreciation for her leadership.

Justice Kagan was vetted for the position of Deputy Attorney General before her selection as Solicitor General.

Justice Kagan testified that she would defend laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, pursuant to which states were not required to recognize same-sex marriages originating in other states, "if there is any reasonable basis to do so".

Justice Kagan noted that Kagan published an article in the University of Chicago Law Review in 1995 in which she criticized the evasiveness she came to practice.

Justice Kagan is the first person appointed to the Court without any prior experience as a judge since William Rehnquist and Lewis F Powell Jr.

Justice Kagan is the fourth female justice in the court's history, and the eighth Jewish justice.

In 2018, Slate observed that Kagan had crossed ideological lines on multiple cases during the preceding term, and considered her to be part of a centrist bloc along with Justices Roberts, Stephen Breyer, and Anthony Kennedy.

Justice Kagan agreed least often with Justice Samuel Alito, in 58.

Justice Kagan reasoned the word "applicable" was key to the statute, and debtors could only take allowances for car-related costs that applied.

Justice Kagan deemed this distinction "arbitrary" because tax credits and grants can be used to achieve the same objectives.

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Justice Kagan viewed the majority's decision as creating a loophole for governments to fund religion.

Justice Kagan argued the use of prayer showed a preference for a particular religion and thus violated Americans' First Amendment rights.

Justice Kagan agreed with Kennedy that the Court's decision created inequity and drew an arbitrary distinction, but further opined that Monsanto might have been wrongly decided.

Justice Kagan suggested she would be willing to overturn such precedent in the future, but declined to do so in the case at bar because Luis had not sought that relief.

Justice Kagan quoted Court precedent that race must only be a predominant consideration, and that challengers did not need to prove politics was not a motivating factor.

Justice Kagan would have struck down the Arizona voting laws that throw out votes that are cast out-of-precinct and ban ballot harvesting.

Justice Kagan wrote that African-American, Latino, and Native American voters are disproportionately likely to have their votes thrown out for being out-of-precinct.

Justice Kagan wrote only majority opinions or dissents that more senior justices assigned to her, and in which she and a group of justices agreed upon a rationale for deciding the case.

Justice Kagan wrote the fewest opinions for the terms from 2011 through 2014, tying with Kennedy in 2011 and 2013.

Justice Kagan's writing has been characterized as conversational, employing a range of rhetorical styles.

Justice Kagan has said that she approaches writing on the Court like she used to approach the classroom, with numerous strategies to engage the reader.

Justice Kagan tends to choose speaking engagements that allow her to speak to students.

Early in her tenure as a justice, Kagan began socializing with several of her new colleagues.

The hunting trips stemmed from a promise Justice Kagan made to US Senator Jim Risch of Idaho during a meeting before her confirmation; Risch expressed concern that, as a New York City native, Justice Kagan did not understand the importance of hunting to his constituents.

Justice Kagan initially offered to go hunting with Risch before promising instead to go hunting with Scalia if confirmed.