Next Solicitor-general: Impressive 1st Amendment Resume - So Why Should You Care?

[FrenchieCat]

The Solicitor-general is the one that argues cases representing the U.S. to the Supreme Court!
She would be the first female Solicitor-general.

I was listening to a case today on Voter ID in the Supreme Court today on C-Span, when I realized what a difference it will be having a solicitor-general who is actually arguing for the people instead of against them, as the current Solicitor-general was doing on C-Span.

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Kagan — who clerked for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall — has tackled such issues and doctrines as hate speech, pornography, viewpoint discrimination, secondary effects and more.

Kagan's articles include:


“The Changing Faces of First Amendment Neutrality: R.A.V. v St. Paul, Rust v Sullivan, and the Problem of Content-Based Underinclusion,” in The Supreme Court Review, 1992.


“Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V.,” University of Chicago Law Review, 1993.


“When a Speech Code is a Speech Code: The Stanford Policy and the Theory of Incidental Restraints,” U.C. Davis Law Review, 1996.


“Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine,” University of Chicago Law Review, 1996.

In her 1993 University of Chicago Law Review piece, she wrote that proposed regulations on hate speech and pornography failed to adhere to the fundamental First Amendment principle of viewpoint neutrality — that the government cannot favor certain private speakers or viewpoints over others.

Her 1996 article on government motive in First Amendment cases has been cited more than 115 times — an enviably high number for a secondary source. In that article she declares that “the application of First Amendment law is best understood and most readily explained as a kind of motive-hunting.”

Helen Norton, a University of Colorado law professor and First Amendment scholar, told the First Amendment Center Online that Kagan’s article "proposes — and then persuasively supports — a coherent explanatory theory of the Supreme Court’s First Amendment doctrine: that ‘most of First Amendment doctrine constitutes a highly, but necessarily, complex scheme for ascertaining the governmental purposes underlying regulations of speech.’ It is extremely well-written and theoretically ambitious (without over-claiming) and is very useful to both scholars and practitioners who seek to make sense of a body of law that often appears convoluted.”
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx?id=21093

[FrenchieCat]

1. Rubbing my hands, waiting for some good debate!

[FrenchieCat]

2. Help!

I started a fire!
(rubbing my hands too long!)

[EconomicLiberal]

3. Elena Kagan is a brilliant choice for Soliciter General.

I hope this is her stepping stone to the Supreme Court. She would be my first choice to fill a vacancy.

[firedupdem]

4. That would be perfect! n/t