Litigation

Pragmatic Approach Seen in Kagan Records

By Peter Hardin

In a new batch of documents from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, one of the themes to emerge about Elena Kagan’s legal work in the Clinton White House is her pragmatic approach.

Because Kagan was nominated by President Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court, more than 46,000 pages of documents were released, and still more documents from the presidential library in Arkansas will be made public.

The records “offer a more detailed picture of a pragmatic strategist dedicated to advancing Clinton’s largely centrist policy aims,” according to a Los Angeles Times article. “[T]hey appeared, at least initially, unlikely to hand Republicans a significant weapon to use to imperil her nomination.”

The records offered an outline of “Kagan as a pragmatist with sometimes unpredictable views on hot-button topics,” the Associated Press reported.

She “took a pragmatic approach to the issue of late-term abortion when working as a top lawyer in the Clinton White House,” CNN said in a news article.

In these documents, Kagan indicated the following approaches:

• She urged Clinton to support a middle ground on a a congressional ban of what has been called the partial-birth abortion procedure.
• On anti-tobacco legislation, she urged a compromise that would not only win passage by Congress but also withstand attacks in court.
  
• She said a proposal to make assisted suicide a federal crime was a “fairly terrible idea,” according to a New York Times article, yet she also noted that some other aides in the White House supported it.

To learn more about Kagan and the nomination process, check out Gavel Grab or Justice at Stake?s ?Replacing Justice Stevens? page.

Full post as published by The Gavel on June 07, 2010 (boomark / email).