Kagan heads back to the Hill for whirlwind visits
(Washington) Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan returned to Capitol Hill Thursday to meet with senators who are key to her confirmation.
The solicitor general, preparing for meetings with Republicans and Democrats, including one who has opposed her in the past, said she’s beginning to get accustomed to the delicate ritual of closely watched courtesy calls she must make in the run-up to her summer confirmation hearings.
Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, her first visit of the day, asked Kagan whether she’s “getting used to this little routine.”
“Just barely,” Kagan responded with a smile.
Kagan, 50, called on eight senators Wednesday and plans meetings with another seven today. That includes one former foe, Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who as a Republican voted last year against confirming her to her current post.
Kerry said he was “very proud” of Kagan, adding that she has “quite a road yet to travel.”
In closed-door meetings, Kagan has assured senators that she’s up to the job of being a justice, seeking to counter GOP criticism of her lack of experience as a judge or courtroom litigator. President Barack Obama tapped Kagan this week to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
Kagan has gotten off to a fast start on Capitol Hill. Shuttling from office to office Wednesday, she stayed quiet in public but fielded questions in private about her resume, opinions and legal philosophy.
Kagan, a former Harvard Law School dean, defended herself against Republican doubts about her fitness to be a fair justice. She said she’d be “faithful to the law,” according to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who said he asked her whether she could be impartial given that she’s identified with “liberal” positions and has clerked for two judges he called “activist.”
Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel that will hold Kagan’s confirmation hearings, said he’d do his best to give her a “fair” hearing, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee chairman, said he’d guarantee a process where senators could ask “all relevant questions.”
Republicans are questioning whether Kagan can be impartial in light of her political views and current position on Obama’s team. And they have harshly criticized her decision while at Harvard to bar military recruiters from campus because she disagreed with the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay soldiers.
GOP senators say they want to see documents from her time serving in Bill Clinton’s White House to get a better understanding of her fitness for the Supreme Court.
“I think all the documents that are producible should be produced,” Sessions said. “The American people are entitled to know what kind of positions she took, and what kind of issues she was involved with during her past public service.”
Democrats praise Kagan as a highly qualified, sharp legal mind who will bring an important perspective from outside the federal bench to the job of justice.
“She brings to this court that kind of intellect and those values that can make a positive difference for the future of the court,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens retiring
(Washington) Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the court’s oldest member and leader of its liberal bloc, is retiring. President Barack Obama now has his second high court opening to fill.
Stevens said Friday he will step down when the court finishes its work for the summer in late June or early July. He said he hopes his successor is confirmed “well in advance of the commencement of the court’s next term.”
The timing of Stevens’ announcement leaves ample time for the White House to settle on a successor and for Senate Democrats, who control a 59-vote majority, to conduct confirmation hearings and a vote before the court’s next term begins in October. Republicans have not ruled out an attempt to delay confirmation.
Stevens’ announcement had been hinted at for months. It comes 11 days before his 90th birthday.
Throughout his tenure, which began after President Gerald Ford nominated him in 1975, Stevens usually sided with the court’s liberal bloc in the most contentious cases – those involving abortion, criminal law, civil rights and church-state relations. He led the dissenters as well in the case of Bush v. Gore that sealed President George W. Bush’s election in 2000.
Stevens began signaling a possible retirement last summer when he hired just one of his usual complement of four law clerks for the next court term. He acknowledged in several interviews that he was contemplating stepping down and would certainly do so during Obama’s presidency.
Chief Justice John Roberts said in a written statement that Stevens has earned the gratitude and admiration of the American people.
“He has enriched the lives of everyone at the Court through his intellect, independence, and warm grace,” Roberts said.
Stevens informed Obama in a one-paragraph letter addressed to “My dear Mr. President,” officially received by the White House at 10:30 a.m. EDT, two minutes before the public announcement. The news came on a day when the court wasn’t in session.
Just before the court’s announcement, Obama, en route back to Washington from a trip to Prague, had called a Friday afternoon Rose Garden statement, saying the subject would be a West Virginia mine accident.
The leading candidates to replace Stevens are Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 49, and federal appellate Judges Merrick Garland, 57, and Diane Wood, 59.
Stevens’ departure will not change the court’s conservative-liberal split because Obama is certain to name a liberal-leaning replacement. But the new justice is not likely to be able to match Stevens’ ability to marshal narrow majorities in big cases.
Stevens was able to draw the support of the court’s swing votes, now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Anthony Kennedy, to rein in or block some Bush administration policies, including the detention of suspected terrorists following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, its tilt toward protecting businesses from some lawsuits and its refusal to act against global warming.
But after the arrival of Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, President George W. Bush’s appointees, Stevens more often was among the four liberal justices in dissent.
Stevens’ recent dissent in a major case involving campaign finance laws showed both the eloquence of his writing and, in his stumbling reading of his opinion in the courtroom, signs that his age might at long last be affecting him, though he remains an active tennis player and swimmer.
He is the court’s last World War II veteran and that experience sometimes finds its way into his writings, recently in a reference to Tokyo Rose, the English-speaking Japanese radio announcer who addressed U.S. soldiers in the Pacific.
Stevens had a reputation as a bright and independent federal appeals court judge when Ford, acting on a recommendation by Attorney General Edward Levi, nominated him to the Supreme Court.
His friendly manner of questioning lawyers who appeared before the court could not hide Stevens’ keen mind. His questions often zero in on the most telling weaknesses of a lawyer’s argument and the case’s practical effect on everyday people.
A pleasant, unassuming man, Stevens has been a prolific and lucid writer. For many years, he wrote more opinions each court term than any other justice.
Most justices let their law clerks write the first drafts of opinions, but Stevens has used his clerks as editors.
He’d write the first draft and submit it to the clerks for comment. “That’s when the real fun begins,” Stevens once told a visitor. “The give and take can get pretty fierce.”
As a result, his opinions have reflected his personal writing style – a conversational one that contrasted sharply with the dry, dull efforts of some other justices.
He said recently that one sign that it would be time to retire would be an inability to churn out those first drafts. But he insisted in recent days that he was still writing them.
Gay rights supporters won’t appeal vote on gay benefits
(Olympia, Wash) Supporters of the state’s most recent expansion of domestic partnership rights announced Wednesday they won’t appeal to the Washington Supreme Court to try and block a public vote on the new law.
Washington Families Standing Together chairwoman Anne Levinson said the group will now focus on a campaign to …
Sotomayor makes rounds on Capitol Hill
(Washington) Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is racing through a crucial set of meetings with senators on Capitol Hill, working to reassure Republicans who worry she’d bring ethnic and gender bias to her decisions.
Sotomayor, who would be the high court’s first Hispanic and third woman, is telling senators in both …
