Kagan Heads For More Scrutiny

Polarizing nominee faces more questioning: Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan moves on to another round of scrutiny on Capitol Hill.
Second day of Kagan hearings to draw out partisan battle lines: As the Senate heads into its second day of confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, lawmakers will get their first chance Tuesday to publicly question President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. The ensuing display will be familiar to any viewer of any recent confirmation process: Democratic and Republican lawmakers will be fighting to define who Kagan is and what kind of justice she might be. On day one, there were two dueling images of Kagan presented in testimony, which will no doubt be the focus as questioning gets under way on day two. In opening statements, Democrats and Kagan herself advanced a portrait of a politically neutral nominee who could be an impartial monitor of the nation's laws. Using words like "modest" and "restraint" to describe the kind of justice she would be, Kagan said she didn't believe the court should overreach beyond the will of the American people and their elected representatives. But that uncontroversial image was at odds with the portrayal Republicans pressed in their opening statements: They depicted Kagan as a left-leaning opinionated activist, a hard-charging operative who had spent more time in politics than in the law. Kagan has "less real legal experience than any nominee in at least 50 years," Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Judiciary Committee's ranking GOP member, said in his opening statement. "Ms. Kagan's career has been consumed more by politics than law." Several other Republicans voiced criticisms of Kagan's lack of experience. But Sessions' critique was perhaps the most scathing, and appeared to offer an advance blueprint of GOP strategy in fighting the nomination. Today, Sessions is second in line behind Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy as questioning begins. Sessions will likely quiz Kagan on her time as a political adviser to President Bill Clinton, her role in restricting military recruiters at Harvard, and her personal political views. On Monday, Sessions raised questions about Kagan's college thesis — which he said "seems to bemoan socialism's demise" — and her choice of judicial heroes, including the late Surpreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom he and other Republicans repeatedly described as an activist judge. While Sessions argued Monday that this "is a confirmation, not a coronation," Kagan, barring any serious gaffes, is likely to be confirmed. As a result, much of the political theater to come will be aimed less directly at Kagan than at the Obama administration, as Republicans and Democrats look to boost their standing ahead of the November elections. Democrats will no doubt seek to bolster Kagan's image as an impartial justice, working firmly within the mainstream. They will also look to counter GOP attacks by arguing their view that the most activist judges on the Supreme Court now are not liberals but conservatives — an argument that Leahy floated in his opening statement Monday. What's unclear is how candid Kagan will actually be under questioning. Well before she was the nominee, Kagan argued in an article for the University of Chicago Law Review that confirmation hearings were a "vapid" sham, in which participants revealed little to nothing. Will she break tradition? Or will she hew to the official playbook followed by other nominees?