President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to replace retiring US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is extremely disappointing. Kagan – a Manhattan, New York native – has many positive attributes, such as having been educated at Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard Universities, serving as a clerk to former Justice Thurgood Marshall, and working in the Executive Office of the President during the Clinton Administration, before serving as dean of Harvard Law School, along with serving on the advisory council for Goldman Sachs (firm which accepted $12.9 billion in taxpayer funded bailout dollars). Kagan is currently Solicitor General, a position in which President Obama appointed her at the beginning of his administration.
If Kagan is confirmed by the US Senate, then all the justices on the Supreme Court will either be Harvard or Yale Law alumni, either Catholic or Jewish (retiring Justice Stevens is currently the only Protestant on the bench), and all nine justices would be from either the greater New York City area or central California; with the lone exception being Clarence Thomas, who is the only African American on the Court and the only member from the South.
President Obama missed a golden opportunity to appoint someone from the American West or Mid-West to serve on the high court. Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired from the Court in January 2006, was the last justice from the American West. The Supreme Court should be diverse and representative of the nation as a whole, however only considering individuals who are either from New York or California, a Harvard or Yale law graduate, a Catholic or Jewish is not diverse, nor is it representative. Justice Stevens may have come from an elite Chicago family, but he served with pride in the US Navy and then earned his J.D. from Illinois’ Northwestern University School of Law. O’Connor and Stevens, neither of whom were Ivy League Scholars, were Protestants from between the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards and have been regarded as two of the most tremendous legal minds of our generation.
Kagan, who holds that her personal opinions and personal life will not affect her judgement, is a far cry from Stevens, who many have regard as being on the liberal side of the Court. While White House aides assure the media that Kagan is not a lesbian, former Harvard Law students, the Gay and Lesbian Fund, and others claim her nomination as a victory for lesbians around the world. Kagan, who has been adamantly against the War of Terror (including operations in Afghanistan and Iraq), banned the military recruiters from the Harvard campus. Later, she claimed this was a reprisal for the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy toward homosexuals in uniform – a policy which was implemented in the early days of the Clinton Administration and has recently seen opposition from former Vice President Dick Cheney and current Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Kagan has been an active voice for the gay and lesbian community. Using Kagan as a ‘Trojan horse’ to push a lesbian onto the Supreme Court seems intellectually dishonest and the American people deserve open and frank answers about who it is that will serve them on the highest court in the land.
There are many well qualified candidates who would have maintained an ideology similar to the president and not have been from the Ivy League, the East Coast, or a liberal Jewish heritage. The American people, of whom the majority are protestant, deserve at least one-out-of-nine justices who represent their perspective. The Mid-West, West, and South have very tremendous jurists who fit the demographic missing from the Supreme Court. Kagan’s anti-military, anti-Christian, and pro-gay, along with politically liberal ideology makes her a very scary choice for the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Kagan would be the youngest justice at age 50 and if she serves as long as 90 year old Justice Stevens, then America is heading towards a very progressive era of liberal judge made law with little or no respect for the text of the Constitution.
If Kagan is confirmed by the US Senate, then all the justices on the Supreme Court will either be Harvard or Yale Law alumni, either Catholic or Jewish (retiring Justice Stevens is currently the only Protestant on the bench), and all nine justices would be from either the greater New York City area or central California; with the lone exception being Clarence Thomas, who is the only African American on the Court and the only member from the South.
President Obama missed a golden opportunity to appoint someone from the American West or Mid-West to serve on the high court. Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired from the Court in January 2006, was the last justice from the American West. The Supreme Court should be diverse and representative of the nation as a whole, however only considering individuals who are either from New York or California, a Harvard or Yale law graduate, a Catholic or Jewish is not diverse, nor is it representative. Justice Stevens may have come from an elite Chicago family, but he served with pride in the US Navy and then earned his J.D. from Illinois’ Northwestern University School of Law. O’Connor and Stevens, neither of whom were Ivy League Scholars, were Protestants from between the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards and have been regarded as two of the most tremendous legal minds of our generation.
Kagan, who holds that her personal opinions and personal life will not affect her judgement, is a far cry from Stevens, who many have regard as being on the liberal side of the Court. While White House aides assure the media that Kagan is not a lesbian, former Harvard Law students, the Gay and Lesbian Fund, and others claim her nomination as a victory for lesbians around the world. Kagan, who has been adamantly against the War of Terror (including operations in Afghanistan and Iraq), banned the military recruiters from the Harvard campus. Later, she claimed this was a reprisal for the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy toward homosexuals in uniform – a policy which was implemented in the early days of the Clinton Administration and has recently seen opposition from former Vice President Dick Cheney and current Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Kagan has been an active voice for the gay and lesbian community. Using Kagan as a ‘Trojan horse’ to push a lesbian onto the Supreme Court seems intellectually dishonest and the American people deserve open and frank answers about who it is that will serve them on the highest court in the land.
There are many well qualified candidates who would have maintained an ideology similar to the president and not have been from the Ivy League, the East Coast, or a liberal Jewish heritage. The American people, of whom the majority are protestant, deserve at least one-out-of-nine justices who represent their perspective. The Mid-West, West, and South have very tremendous jurists who fit the demographic missing from the Supreme Court. Kagan’s anti-military, anti-Christian, and pro-gay, along with politically liberal ideology makes her a very scary choice for the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Kagan would be the youngest justice at age 50 and if she serves as long as 90 year old Justice Stevens, then America is heading towards a very progressive era of liberal judge made law with little or no respect for the text of the Constitution.
