The White House on Saturday asked Bill Clinton's presidential library to speed the release of more than 160,000 pages of paper, including e-mail, in its possession from Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's tenure as a Clinton adviser in the 1990s.

In a letter to the U.S. archivist, White House counsel Bob Bauer said he was requesting the expedited release to aid the Senate's review of Kagan's nomination. Kagan currently is the U.S. solicitor general.

Kagan has never been a judge and has only appeared in court as a litigant since becoming solicitor general, the top lawyer representing the administration in cases before the Supreme Court. As a result, she has not created a lengthy paper trail of court opinions and legal briefs that lawmakers typically examine to assess a nominee's legal acumen or ideology.