Andrew Cohen: Elena Kagan and John Roberts: Yin and Yang or Two of a Kind?
[Andrew Cohen is a two-time Edward R. Murrow Award-winner and legal editor and chief network legal analyst and commentator for CBS News Radio and its hundreds of television and radio affiliates around the country.]
They both attended and excelled at Harvard Law School. They both worked for their respective patron/presidents at the Office of the White House Counsel. He clerked for his predecessor, the late chief justice of the United States, before working in the solicitor general's office. She clerked for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall before making her recent bones at the Supreme Court after becoming the nation's first female solicitor general.
When President George H.W. Bush nominated him to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992, Senate Democrats blocked the appointment. When President Bill Clinton nominated her in 1999 to the same court, Senate Republicans blocked her from getting a vote. That seat on the court eventually went to him. They were both nominated to the highest court in the land when they were 50 years old, the youngest prospective members of their time, and if she is confirmed, they will likely serve there together for the next 25 years, at least.
It's Frick and Frack. Yin and Yang. Stuck together like carrots and peas.
There are enough similarities between the pre-Supreme Court careers of Chief Justice John Roberts and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to make their differences going forward even more pronounced. If he is to anchor the court's right for the next generation, President Obama hopes that Kagan will anchor its left for at least that long. If he came to his job with a reputation for courtesy and respect for the institution, she comes to her nomination with a reputation for being a consensus-builder. Whether she can be more effective at this tough task than he has over the past few years remains an open question....
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They both attended and excelled at Harvard Law School. They both worked for their respective patron/presidents at the Office of the White House Counsel. He clerked for his predecessor, the late chief justice of the United States, before working in the solicitor general's office. She clerked for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall before making her recent bones at the Supreme Court after becoming the nation's first female solicitor general.
When President George H.W. Bush nominated him to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992, Senate Democrats blocked the appointment. When President Bill Clinton nominated her in 1999 to the same court, Senate Republicans blocked her from getting a vote. That seat on the court eventually went to him. They were both nominated to the highest court in the land when they were 50 years old, the youngest prospective members of their time, and if she is confirmed, they will likely serve there together for the next 25 years, at least.
It's Frick and Frack. Yin and Yang. Stuck together like carrots and peas.
There are enough similarities between the pre-Supreme Court careers of Chief Justice John Roberts and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to make their differences going forward even more pronounced. If he is to anchor the court's right for the next generation, President Obama hopes that Kagan will anchor its left for at least that long. If he came to his job with a reputation for courtesy and respect for the institution, she comes to her nomination with a reputation for being a consensus-builder. Whether she can be more effective at this tough task than he has over the past few years remains an open question....