The Feminist Majority strongly encourages the United States Senate to quickly confirm Elena Kagan. Solicitor General Kagan is superbly qualified for this position. She has distinguished herself throughout her academic and professional career and has the keen intellect, the compassion, and the broad experience needed to be an outstanding justice.
“Her remarkable legal career shows her respect for women’s rights, including anti-discrimination laws, the right to privacy, and laws to reduce violence against women. Her confirmation, which will result in women comprising one-third of the Supreme Court, will establish the historic milestone of women comprising, at last, a critical mass within one of the branches of the federal government,” commented Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority. “We wholeheartedly endorse her immediate confirmation.”
After a stellar academic career at Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, Solicitor General Kagan held the prestigious positions of law clerk to federal court of appeals judge Abner Mikva and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She has worked in both Congress and the Executive Branch, serving as senior counsel to Senator Joe Biden, who was then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as President Bill Clinton’s Associate White House Counsel, deputy assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. Most recently, she has been the Solicitor General of the United States, the first woman in American history to hold that position. Few nominees for the Supreme Court have had such varied experience in government service.
Solicitor General Kagan has also distinguished herself as an academic, initially as a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, then as a law professor and dean at Harvard Law School. She is the first woman to hold that prestigious position. As a professor, she wrote award-winning articles and was renowned as a teacher. As a dean, she won the universal respect of faculty and students.
Solicitor General Kagan has the intellect, the compassion, and the experience to be an outstanding justice on the United States Supreme Court. She would be the fourth woman in American history to serve on the high court. The Feminist Majority urges the Senate Judiciary Committee and the United States to quickly confirm Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court.
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