Kagan Nomination Leaves Some Longing on the Left
By PETER BAKER
Published: May 10, 2010
WASHINGTON — The selection of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be the nation’s 112th justice extends a quarter-century pattern in which
Republican presidents generally install strong conservatives on the Supreme Court while Democratic presidents pick candidates who often disappoint their liberal base.
Ms. Kagan is certainly too liberal for conservatives, who quickly criticized her nomination on Monday as a radical threat. But much like every other Democratic nominee since the 1960s, she does not fit the profile sought by the left, which hungers for a full-throated counterweight to the court’s conservative leader, Justice Antonin Scalia.
In many ways, this reflects how much the nation’s long war over the judiciary has evolved since Ms. Kagan was a child. While the American left back then used the Supreme Court to promote social change in areas like religion, race and abortion, today it looks at it more as a backstop to defend those rulings. The right, on the other hand, remains aggrieved and has waged an energetic campaign to make the court an agent of change reversing some of those holdings.
Along the way, conservatives have largely succeeded in framing the debate, putting liberals on the defensive. Sonia Sotomayor echoed conservatives in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year by rejecting the idea of a “living” Constitution that evolves, and even President Obama recently said the court had gone too far in the past. While conservatives have played a powerful role in influencing Republican nominations, liberals have not been as potent in Democratic selections.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/us/politics/11nominees.html?hp