Elena Kagan and the 'Hollow Charade'

WSJ ^ | May 11, 2010 | Neomi Rao

[yoe]

Yesterday President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to fill the fourth Supreme Court vacancy in less than six years. This nomination presents an opportunity for a teaching moment about what the court does, how it affects the lives of ordinary citizens, and how individual justices make a difference in this enterprise.

[snip] One can only hope that Ms. Kagan will go off-script. In a 1995 book review published in the University of Chicago Law Review, she lamented that recent confirmation hearings were nothing but "a vapid and hollow charade." She explained that the Senate should view confirmation hearings "as an opportunity to gain knowledge and promote public understanding of what the nominee believes the Court should do and how she would affect its conduct."

[snip] If President Obama wants to pick judges that are more like Justice Breyer and less like Justice Scalia, that's his prerogative. Elections have consequences for the appointment of judges, just as they do for public policy. But it would elevate the debate substantially if Ms. Kagan, former dean of Harvard Law School, could explain her views of the judicial process.

Right now we know little about those views since Ms. Kagan has never been a judge and has not written on the topic. If President Obama is true to his campaign promises, his nominee will differ substantially from his predecessor's nominees. Will Ms. Kagan articulate this difference in her hearings?

[yoe]

Ms. Kagan has never been a judge and has not written on the topic of law.......she is sort of alien to U.S. courts as well as U.S. law except for her interpretation. Urge your elected to at least find someone who knows law.....Ms. Kagan is a mover and shaker among the radicals......that usually means non-lawful and non-constitutional.

[loveliberty2]

This appointment seems to trivialize the Court and makes the Constitution's own provision in Article V even more important for consideration by today's citizens.

In the title essay of the 292-page volume, "Our Ageless Constitution," Justice Joseph Story is quoted on the wisdom, as well as the fragility, of the United States Constitution.

When one considers the great intellect, wisdom, understanding and foresight of America's Founders--all directed toward preserving the liberty of rising generations, one must conclude that their worst fears are being realized as this foolish President "transforms" America into a debtor nation, making slaves of all citizens and snuffing out the light of liberty for his own posterity--indeed, for all the world.

Justice Joseph Story said of the Constitution of the United States: "The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid; its components are beautiful, as well as useful; its arrangements are full of wisdom and order, and its defenses are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, THE PEOPLE. Republics are created by virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens."

If America's citizens, who are designated by the Constitution in Article V to be the constitutional KEEPERS of the Constitution, do not act soon to reverse the reckless plunge this Administration is taking toward undoing the Founders' protections for liberty, then future generations may never know or experience their heritage of liberty.