Elena Kagan: identity politics liberal, corporate/executive privilege conservative

Hannah Bell

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Tue May-11-10 01:28 AM
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Elena Kagan: identity politics liberal, corporate/executive privilege conservative

Edited on Tue May-11-10 01:54 AM by Hannah Bell

note: title changed because one of the respondents took exception to the original title which was: obama picks kagan for supreme court.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8311559&mesg_id=8311586

In the run-up to the nomination, the White House maneuvered politically in the style which has become the norm for this administration. Three candidates were designated as the semi-official frontrunners: Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland, the most conservative; Appeals Court Judge Diane Wood, the most liberal; and Kagan, presented as the moderate in-between, whose selection would convey Obama�s desire for bipartisan consensus...

Kagan has never been a judge and has written little on controversial legal and social issues, making her political views relatively opaque. In her 15 months as Solicitor General, the most notable cases taken up by her office have been in defense of the prerogatives of the executive branch in intelligence, surveillance and prisoner detention. In that sphere, at least, her selection to replace Justice Stevens means a shift to the right...

While she served as a law clerk for two prominent liberals... Kagan�s liberalism is rooted in identity politics, primarily feminism and gay rights, and has no connection with the mass struggles of earlier years....Kagan served on the legal staff of the Clinton White House, rising to the position of deputy to the top adviser on domestic policy, Bruce Reed, a representative of the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council. Reed and Kagan worked closely together in drafting the Clinton administration�s welfare reform policy, which led to the abolition of Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996....Her best-known action at Harvard was to recruit several prominent conservatives as law professors. During this period, her strongest public pronouncement came in a legal brief signed by numerous law professors supporting a ban on military recruiters at major law schools. The ban was imposed because the Pentagon�s �don�t ask, don�t tell� policy on gays violated the non-discrimination policies of the schools.

Kagan described the inability of gays to serve openly in the military as a �monstrous injustice,� a term which apparently does not apply to such barbarities as the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial or judicial proceeding of any kind, in US facilities like Guant�namo Bay, assassinations ordered by the US president, or the systematic illegal wiretapping of US citizens.

In her confirmation hearing as Solicitor General, Kagan embraced the Bush administration perspective of a global war on terror, in which the entire planet should be considered, from a legal standpoint, part of the battlefield in which the rules of war and military justice could be applied. She later defended the �state secrets privilege,� a legal doctrine that effectively bars suits against illegal government surveillance, and opposed granting habeas corpus rights to prisoners at US facilities in Afghanistan.

On economic policy, like the liberals she will join on the court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonya Sotomayor, Kagan has a distinctly pro-corporate and pro-business record, having served as a paid member of an advisory panel for Goldman Sachs from 2005 to 2008.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/kaga-m11.shtml