President Barack Obama will today nominate Elena Kagan, the US solicitor general, for the American Supreme Court.
The former dean of Harvard Law school will become only the fourth woman to serve on America’s highest court, after Mr Obama chose hispanic Sonia Sotomayor last year.
Ms Kagan, 50, who will replace retiring liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, 90, if she is confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate will be the youngest member of the current court.
A high-powered legal scholar and veteran of the Clinton White House, Ms Kagan, unlike most Supreme Court nominees has not served for years as a judge. Some liberal and legal interest groups had pressured the president to chose someone from outside the “judicial monastery.”
She is also said to have cultivated ties with some conservatives, which could help her prospects of confirmation.
Mr Obama said in April that he would chose a replacement for liberal icon Mr Stevens who “knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.”
Republicans may make a show of opposing Kagan’s nomination, but many observers believe that she is almost certain to win Senate confirmation.
When she was facing Senate confirmation as solicitor general, Attorney General Eric Holder praised Ms Kagan’s “intelligence, experience and commitment to the rule of law.” She was confirmed to serve as solicitor general last year by 61 votes to 31 in the Senate.
Ms Kagan, who was passed over by Mr Obama last year when he chose Ms Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nomination will be only the fourth woman after Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Ms Sotomayor, who made history as the first Hispanic justice, to sit on the nation’s top court.
A 1981 graduate of Princeton University, Ms Kagan completed her studies at Harvard Law School in 1986, leaving just two years before Mr Obama arrived there.
She was professor of law in Chicago, Mr Obama’s home town and was chosen by then President Bill Clinton to serve as his associate counsel and then advisor on domestic policy between 1995 to 1999.
During her time with the Clinton administration, Kagan cultivated contacts with many of the lawyers now serving in various capacities in the Obama administration.
She went on to become a visiting professor of law at Harvard in 1999 and then professor of law in 2001. She was appointed dean in 2003.
In a letter to the Harvard Law School when Mr Obama chose her as solicitor general, Ms Kagan said she had accepted the nomination “to help advance this nation’s commitment to the rule of law at what I think is a critical time in our history.”
Anne Barrowclough
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