Senate judiciary leader says Kagan is qualified despite lack of judicial experience
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Trying to defuse a Republican line of attack, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat on Tuesday defended Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan from charges she was unqualified because she had never served on a court.
In comments on the Senate floor, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he favored picking a Supreme Court nominee from outside the court system as a way of bringing a different viewpoint to the top court. Leahy’s committee is scheduled to hold hearings June 28 on the nomination of Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general, to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens, who is retiring.
‘I have long urged presidents from both political parties to look outside what I have called the judicial monastery and not to feel restricted to considering only federal appellate judges as potential Supreme Court nominees,’ Leahy said.
If confirmed, Kagan would be the only member of the court to have never served as a federal appellate judge. She would also be the first non-federal appeals judge to join the court since Sandra Day O’Connor, who was appointed in 1981.
‘Having counseled the president to look outside the judicial monastery, I was struck that the first wave of attacks by Senate Republicans to this nomination was that she lacked judicial experience,’ Leahy said.
Republicans have questioned Kagan’s lack of judicial experience, but Leahy argued they did not show the same restraint when President George W. Bush nominated his counsel, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court in 2005. The nomination was eventually dropped.
‘Now that a Democratic president is nominating, they reverse themselves to contend that lack of judicial experience is a matter for ‘concern,’ is ‘troubling,’ and a matter that ‘warrants great scrutiny,’’ Leahy said. ‘Again, Senate Republicans are moving the goal posts, and shifting the standard.’
-- Michael Muskal
