U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan selected by President Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing Justice John Paul Stephens. (AP File Photo)
It's official, President Barack Obama will nominate U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 50, the former dean of Harvard Law School, to be 112th justice of the United States Supreme Court.
The formal announcement will be made late Monday morning at a press conference at the White House.
Kagan will only the fourth woman selected to the nation's highest court.
If she is confirmed by the United States Senate, nine-member court will have three female justices for the first time.
In replacing Justice John Paul Stevens, Obama would also be breaking with tradition. Every other member of the court is a former federal appeals court judge, and Kagan has never served in the judiciary. The last time a non-judge was appointed was in 1972, when President Richard M. Nixon nominated William H. Rehnquist and Lewis Powell in the same year.
All U.S. Supreme Court Justices were males until 1981, when Ronald Reagan fulfilled his 1980 campaign promise to place a woman on the Court,[42] which he did with the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor. O'Connor was later joined on the Court by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993. After O'Connor retired in 2006, Ginsburg would be joined by Sonia Sotomayor, who was successfully appointed to the Court in 2009 by Obama. The only other woman to be nominated to the Court was Harriet Miers, whose nomination to succeed O'Connor by George W. Bush was withdrawn under fire.
Conservatives have said the most controversial issue in her past was her belief that the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy meant recruiters on campus would violate the Harvard Law School's anti-discrimination policy. Other law schools felt the same, but they were unsuccessful at the Supreme Court. The court said Congress could withhold federal funding from universities that did not accommodate military recruiters.
Critics also say that Kagan would bring less legal experience to the job than any of her recent predecessors. She worked two years as a private lawyer, with the rest of her career in government and academia. She was chosen by Clinton for a spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit when she was 39, but the Republican-controlled Senate did not bring her nomination to a vote.
According to the Washington Post, The lack of judicial experience may be a negative in terms of the public's reaction to the pick. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, seven in 10 Americans said service as a judge is a factor in favor of a nominee, the most to say so on any attribute tested in the poll.
Obama touted the importance of judicial experience last year when he nominated Sotomayor, who had served for years as a district judge and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
"Walking in the door, she would bring more experience on the bench and more varied experience on the bench than anyone currently serving on the United States Supreme Court had when they were appointed," Obama said.
Conservatives planned to use that standard now against the president's new nominee. "Kagan may well have less experience relevant to the work of being a justice than any justice in the last five decades or more," M. Edward Whelan III, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, wrote on National Review Online.
Kagan was picked by Clinton for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1999, but the Republican-controlled Senate did not take up her nomination.
The nomination died when Clinton left office, and President George W. Bush picked another lawyer for the seat--John G. Roberts Jr., now chief justice.
Kagan joked about the missed opportunity in a speech in 2001. "You know, sometimes people ask me: Do you feel bad that your nomination was left hanging up there, that you never had the chance to be a D.C. circuit judge? And you know, if the truth be told, sometimes I do. But I've come up with a really good way off making those feelings go away: What I do is I pick up another D.C. Circuit opinion."
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