Status Quo at the Supreme Court

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Elena Kagan is currently the U.S. Solicitor General, which means that her job is to argue the government's cases that come before the Supreme Court.  By the first Monday in October, she could be helping decide those cases.

President Barack Obama nominated Kagan to be a justice on the Supreme Court, replacing the retiring John Paul Stevens.  It's not going to make much of an ideological dent--the President is simply trading in one moderate for another--but this is going to be the court's third female justice, with Kagan possibly joining Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, so the gender balance is close to evening things out.

Kagan has never been a judge.  But she has had experience working for Thurgood Marshall when he was a justice, and for President Bill Clinton.  She has also been dean of Harvard Law School.  That background may or may not help her in the Senate confirmation hearings to come, but prior experience in wearing judicial robes doesn't appear to be in the job description.

In this partisan age, it's not surprising that those on the left or right would have a problem with Kagan.  She hasn't said much about her positions on hot judicial topics, or how she would rule on them.  Liberals don't trust her because she's not liberal enough for them.  Conservatives will try to block her nomination, or at least drag it closer to the elections, just because they'll oppose anything Obama does.  But unless there's some kind of bombshell revelation about Kagan, she will likely be confirmed.

Like we said, Kagan's nomination won't change the fact that this is still a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices who were chosen by Republican presidents.  But the longer Obama or some other Democrat occupies the White House, the more interesting things would be if circumstances forced some of those justices to step down.