Yes, but is she persuasive?
President Obama’s nomination of Elana Kagan to the Supreme Court has sparked a debate on the Left, not so much over her lack of experience, but over the perception that she is more conservative than retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald is the leading agitator in this movement. A number of liberals have argued in response that the remedy to a 5-4 conservative Court is not a more liberal counterbalance, as Greenwald claims, but someone who can move Justice Anthony Kennedy’s swing vote to the liberal side. The New Republic’s Jeffrey Rosen claims that Kagan has “demonstrated success winning over skeptical conservatives at every stage of her career.” Thus, she is “just what the doctor ordered.” The American Prospect has its own take on whether Kennedy is persuadable, but the more important question here is not whether the tactic will work, but whether the President should be nominating judges for this reason, as opposed to, say, his belief that she be an “impartial guardian of the law.”
-Marc
Related posts:
- Rookie rules
- Graham’s vote for Kagan
- Supreme ideology
- Guest post: Picking the next Supreme Court Justice
- How should we pick judges?
ShareComments
Leave a Reply
