From Slate:
Since the Republican attacks on Elena Kagan’s fitness to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court have thus far ranged from hypocritical to laughable to insane, the fight between the left and the way left has become far more interesting, with Salon’s Glenn Greenwald battling her supporters and everyone else trying to figure out where they stand. But the fact remains that none of us knows a thing about Kagan’s judicial philosophy. She has neither said nor written much of anything that would tell us how she thinks a judge ought to decide cases—and it’s clear that the White House likes this state of affairs, thank you very much, and plans to keep it that way.
But if we know almost nothing about Kagan’s jurisprudential approach, and with a confirmation process 100 percent guaranteed to further obscure and confuse what little we might have guessed about it, with this nomination President Obama’s own judicial philosophy is beginning to come into focus. Those of us who watched last year’s battle over a Supreme Court nominee bog down in a cartoonish fight between “umpires” and “empathy” had hoped to hear the president express a clearly defined vision for the court. It never really came. But combing through various speeches, interviews, his comments about Citizens United in the State of the Union speech, and then his nomination of Kagan, one conclusion is all but certain: Obama won’t be mucking up the courts with liberal fire-breathers any time soon.
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