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August 5, 2010 Print

Kagan Confirmed

by Bruce Hausknecht

The vote was 63-37. Significantly lower than Sotomayor’s vote last year (68-31). I say “significant” because the composition of the Senate hasn’t changed much since last year. And the folks that were swayed to oppose Kagan this time were Republicans. That tells me that we’re making progress in the debate over judicial philosophy, even if it’s only with Republicans who should have understood who Sotomayor was in the first place. But Kagan had plenty of problems of her own, as I’ve chronicled here before.

Best quote of the day came from Sen. Scott Brown:

“I believe nominees to the Supreme Court should have previously served on the bench. Lacking that, I look for many years of practical courtroom experience to compensate for the absence of prior judicial experience. In Elena Kagan’s case, she is missing both.”

“The best umpires, to use the popular analogy, must not only call balls and strikes, but also have spent enough time on the playing field to know the strike zone.”

Nicely put.

Related content:

  1. Surprise: Justice Kagan Votes Like John Paul Stevens
  2. Senate Denies Confirmation Vote to Controversial Nominee
  3. How do You Like Your Constitution: Dead or Alive?
  4. Supreme Court to Decide Whether to Hear Obamacare Appeals


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  • John

    Both confirmations were abominations. Neither is qualified. Neither has significant experience and both are Anti-American, they will not defend and/or interpret the Constitution, but rather, will vote according to “Social Justice.”

    If we do not change the course of America before Christmas, we are doomed. I do not say this lightly. 80% of our politicians are corrupt, obviously so. And the legal system is corrupt. (snip)

    Are we doomed? As I see it, yes. I hope God shows me I’m wrong.

    • Bruce Hausknecht

      John- I appreciate your passion, but I do like for the discussion in the comments to be not so hyberbolic in criticizing individuals, either politicians or, in other cases not applicable to your comment, other commenters. That’s why I snipped out a couple lines in your comment.

  • Ex-GOP Voter

    If it was as easy as calling “balls and strikes”, we could plug the cases into a computer program. Scottie Brown was talking more for conservative votes than actually trying to make a legitimate argument. As many thinking folks have pointed out, a giant role of the supreme court is looking at cases with conflicting constitutional values. The strike zone argument is simply a bad analogy.

    I’m not a huge fan of Kagan, but she must be okay if the judicial experience issue was the eventual talking point the right ran with. I figure if it wasn’t an issue with Harriet Miers, then the GOP was just playing both sides of the fence again (not saying the Democrats don’t do the same thing…I just like legit arguments better)

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