Brewing legal disputes could define Kagan's early tenure

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau
Story posted 2010.08.07 at 06:31 PM PDT

Reporting from Washington-- This summer, as Elena Kagan quietly moved toward confirmation to the Supreme Court, three major legal disputes took shape that could define her early years.

The justices soon will be called upon to decide whether states like Arizona can enforce immigration laws, whether same-sex couples have a right to marry and whether Americans can be required to buy health insurance. Kagan's record strongly suggests she will vote in favor of federal regulation of immigration and health insurance and vote to oppose discrimination against gays and lesbians.

What is less clear is whether she will be voting with a center-left majority that includes Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, or as liberal dissenter on a court whose five Republican appointees outvote the four Democratic appointees. Kagan, 50, is the fourth new justice in five years. And for the first time, the high court has three women. But the ideological divide is unlikely to change much.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. form a solid conservative bloc. The liberal bloc includes Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, with Kagan now set to replace Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired at age 90. In the major cases that divide the court, however, the outcome almost always depends on Kennedy, 74.

http://mobile.latimes.com/wap/news/text.jsp?sid=294&nid=18151516&cid=16677&scid=1854&ith=1&title=Top+Stories