Litigation

The Kagan nomination, May 12

By Ted Frank

• It's odd that Kathleen Parker, who made her Pulitzer-Prize-winning reputation as a conservative columnist for criticizing Sarah Palin, is taking an anti-intellectual position on Elena Kagan that veers disturbingly close to simple anti-Semitism. Conservative Michael Gerson goes with a more of a conventional-wisdom approach, noting that she's a cipher.
• We ended up learning a lot about Chief Justice Roberts during his nomination because his papers in the Reagan administration were released at Senator Specter's insistence. Will we get the equivalent documents from the Clinton administration about Kagan?
• ATRA general counsel Victor Schwartz reminisces about Kagan's role in Clinton's veto of product liability tort reform and how she was "distinctly pro-plaintiff," which is somehow translated into "Supreme Court nominee's tort reform stance praised." This says very little about how she'd rule in civil justice reform cases before the Court, however.
• More detail on Kagan's uneventful 28 months at Williams & Connolly. [National Law Journal]
• Expect to see more of this in the future: White House goes over reporters' heads by producing its own video on Kagan. On the other hand, fewer than 13,000 views as of this morning, so the sopoforic effort is not exactly going viral.
• Federalist Society podcast on the nomination moderated by Rachel Brand.
• Mixed reviews on Kagan's batting stance. I haven't seen a critique of her poker skills, yet, though.
• Speaking of Kagan's batting stance, we have Kagan's former roommate and Eliot Spitzer vouching for her heterosexuality. See also AOL News. Stephanie Mencimer suggests that there is misogyny involved (and certainly Andrew Sullivan's obsession parallels his similar seizing upon rumors about Sarah Palin). But I'd be more impressed about Mencimer's tut-tutting about journalists who evaluate candidates' looks if Mencimer were to, say, apologize for her own hypocritical snark about the looks of a corporate attorney.

Full post as published by Point of Law on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).