Kagan a Courtroom Novice No Problem for High Court, Supporters Say

FOX News ^ | May 10, 2010

[Jim Robinson]

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has never been a judge, she's never ruled on a case and she's never written an opinion. But that doesn't mean she's President Obama's Harriet Miers.

For the president's supporters, lack of courtroom experience is no problem for a Supreme Court justice.

"President Obama said he wanted someone on the high court who understood the impact of the law on average Americans, and I believe the depth and breadth of Ms. Kagan's will allow her that perspective," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Monday in a statement echoed by several Democrats.

While Republicans raise Kagan's lack of experience as a potential sticking point, the gap in her resume doesn't seem to be putting her in the same boat as Miers, President George W. Bush's White House counsel who was forced to withdraw her nomination for the Supreme Court over complaints that her record of opinions was thin.

Miers' nomination was derailed by questions about not only her judicial experience, but also her intellectual aptitude and preparedness.

[DonaldC]

Just imagine if Bush would have put up a novice like this woman.....

[GeronL]

I think we all know that she is a left wing socialist idealogue who thinks the SCOTUS main job is to aid the disadvantage and disregard what the Constitution actually means.

She is also one ugly lady.

hehehe

[CodeToad]

Yet, they tried to lay claim that Sarah Palin, a governor, was unqualified.

[GeronL]

Harriet Miers?

[FateAmenableToChange]

"President Obama said he wanted someone on the high court who understood the impact of the law on average Americans, and I believe the depth and breadth of Ms. Kagan's will allow her that perspective," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Monday in a statement echoed by several Democrats.

These words just don't mean what I think Durban thinks they mean. She's an elitist, athiest, left-wing, sheltered academic whose most difficult decisions involved restructuring the first year curriculum at Harvard Law. Curriculum discussions well and truly stink, I'll give you that, but there's just no there there. She's more of an empty suit than Zero, which is possibly why he wants her. "See, I have more substance than the yutz that you voted onto the SCOTUS!!!"

[Lurker]

Do I really have to say it?

[bgill]

He’s getting his house in order for when one of the birth certificate law suits breaks loose and the Supremes have to make a final decision.

[Deo volente]

It’s nice to see Fox News cheering her on.

/sarc

[Behind Liberal Lines]

William Reinquist had no prior judicial experience before being appointed to the SCotUS. I think he turned out okay.

[GeronL]

The person in my post is actually Patton Oswalt who played Spence on “King of Queens”/

heh.

[GeronL]

Nobody understands the “average American” like an Ivory Tower leftwing ideologue...

[Fred Hayek]

Zero does not care about her complete lack of experience on the bench. In fact her lack of experience in areas of jurisprudence is being considered an advantage in pushing the agenda.

[GeronL]

Apparently some idiot on MSNBC is saying she would move the court to the right.

The audience all died laughing, it could mean the end of MSNBC.

[marron]

He could slap a wig on a corn-husk and his toadies in congress and the press would line up to tell us what a brilliant choice, no, “inspired choice” it was for Supreme Court.

They should be embarrassed but they are too far gone, too far sold out to notice or care.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

LOL!

[SF_Redux]

no problem except maybe this example

Kagan Whitewash

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0510/kagan_blemish_gahr.php3

[Deo volente]

William Rehnquist was a principled conservative who honored and respected the Constitution and the rule of law.

Elena Kagan lamented the fact that socialists still have not gained total control of the United States government. I doubt very much she'll turn out to be okay.

from her senior thesis: "In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?...

"Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism in New York to the position of marginality and insignificance from which it has never recovered. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one’s fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/05/elena_kagan_radical.asp

[AnAmericanMother]

But Rehnquist had practiced law for many years, both in private practice and as an Attorney General. A busy litigation practice can produce a good level-headed judge -- I know plenty of them. They tend to start out weak on civil or criminal (depending on which they did in practice) but litigation work makes you a quick study.

This woman has NO judicial experience, NO litigation experience, and NO academic record: while she's been in academia she hasn't published squat - just been an administrator. She did a stint somewhere in the White House counsel's office under Clinton, but so far as I can tell never actually did any litigation work. And her single appearance before the USSC as Solicitor-General (where she's hardly had time to warm the seat) was embarassing. You don't just waltz in and argue before the USSC . . . you'll get your head handed to you.

She's just an academic hothouse flower - no real world experience. She would be a total disaster on the USSC.

[freekitty]

Has anyone noticed that both Obama’s nominees, Sotomayer and Kagan have both been overruled big time by courts?

Is this a qualification for something other than the Court?