Kagan confirmed:
Elena Kagan has been confirmed as Solicitor General. Early on, before becoming Dean of Harvard Law School, she showed wise judgment by giving me an A in Administrative Law, which I'm teaching right now. And, in one of her first acts while dean, she graciously moderated my target shooting club's debate featuring Eugene, Alan Dershowitz, and Dennis Henigan of the Brady Center. Congratulations, Elena!
Hands are slapping foreheads in the Senate, as Senate staffers bewail their failure to notice this "smoking gun" before she was confirmed.
I loved Dershowitz's acquiescence to Eugene's debate points, even though, as he stated, he didn't want to.
My guess is that a lot of the votes against her were because this is probably not the best place to learn from scratch how to argue before the Supreme Court.
Yes, I'm sure that many of the 31 Republicans who voted against her were swayed by her lack of experience.
We can put your theory to a test. Concern with experience is a non-partisan issue. I recall that it was Republicans who forced Bush's hand on the Meiers appointment over the experience issue (Orin Hatch: She's a little hazy on the Commerce Clause).
If the opposition was experience based, I would bet that the 31 nay votes were spread between Democrats and Republicans. Or, if partisanship did count for some Republican votes - say ten - the remaining 21 would be split proportionally - since Dems have 59% of the Senate, that would give 13 Dem nays and 8 Republican nays.
Even then, I'm not sure that litigation experience is the only relevant experience - perhaps an illustrious career in academia indicates some understanding of the legal process.
But what do I know? I'm just a dirt farmer.
If the counter hypothesis is that opposition to Kagan comes from partisan corners, I'd expect a vote split overwhelmingly along party lines - and that the Republicans who votes aye would be the type of Republicans called RINOs by the dittoheads.
I really don't know which is true - does someone have the vote totals?
Well, I guess the "experience" angle fails to mesh with the facts in evidence. Perhaps we should believe Specter when he says he opposition is over abortion, capital punishment, same sex rights, and military recruitment.
I do assume that many supported her regardless of her lack of experience in certain areas under the assumption or belief that she is smart enough and accomplished enough that she can come up to speed and do the sort of job required fairly quickly. We shall see. My guess is that she won't be as good at this as they expect, but, then again, I am often opposing the government, and so think that if she is not as effective as she might have been with more relevant experience, then that would often be for the better.
Of that group, only Marshall was particularly known for appellate advocacy before becoming SG. Starr and McCree had been appellate judges, and Days and Lee had been AAGs. But the others were academics with little or no appellate experience -- just like Kagan -- before becoming SG (or, in Fried's case, Principal Deputy, then SG). They did pretty well, on the whole.
I wonder how many people who now complain about Elena Kagan's qualifications would have complained about Bob Bork's qualifications if they had been around when he was nominated to be SG. He was an academic who lacked appellate experience, and, unlike Elena Kagan, he hadn't even clerked on the Supreme Court (though his law school classmate Abner Mikva had).
My point is not to bash Bork or to praise Kagan unduly. Quite the contrary, I admire many things about Bork, whom Justice Stevens -- yes, Justice Stevens, not a more conservative Justice -- has praised as the best oral advocate to come before the Court regularly during his time. I make only the modest points (a) that one CAN be a very successful SG without prior appellate experience and (b) that partisans tend to find fault with people they oppose ideologically when they would not find fault with similarly situated ideological soulmates.
And as for Const. Crisis's comment, an amusing anecdote.
Back about a dozen years ago, when I was a green summer associate, I went out to a court hearing in the Chicago burbs with a partner in my BigLaw firm. This was one of the finest law firms in the country (still is), and the guy had been a partner already for a decade or more -- very well established guy. And the whole way out, in bad Chicago traffic, the guy talked. And damned if he didn't work the clause "when I was at Harvard Law School" into every third sentence. It was pathological. Apparently I was supposed not only to care where he went to law school, but also to be impressed. I felt kind of sorry for him, actually.
As for Specter, I think you need to re-read, because he didn't say that and neither the part you quoted nor any other part of the article says he said that. You should have realized that your argument didn't make any sense, because Specter voted against her and yet agrees with her on most or all of those points.
(*) Indeed, one would think that Republicans would want an inexperienced Democrat in this position.
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