Solicitor-general nominee: impressive First Amendment resume

[usregimechange]

To contrast views express here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8343847

Special thanks to DUer mvd for pointing this article out a bit ago.


President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for U.S. solicitor general — Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan — has an impressive pro-First Amendment record of scholarship.

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe — who has published extensively on the First Amendment and argued numerous First Amendment cases before the Supreme Court — told the First Amendment Center Online: “Elena Kagan’s First Amendment scholarship has been both insightful and influential. As with every other topic she touches, this one has been brightly illuminated by her examination of it.”

Christina Wells, a University of Missouri law professor who teaches free-speech issues and publishes extensively in the field, offered similar sentiments: “I am very impressed with the quality of Dean Kagan’s work in the free speech area, which I believe is quite thoughtful and nuanced. She is enormously talented at seeing relationships among seemingly disparate strands of free speech jurisprudence, which has allowed her to gain a broader understanding of the jurisprudence as a whole rather than simply arguing from a particular stance on a particular topic. … Her articles are among a handful of free speech authors that I keep around for frequent reference when I write.”

Norton, arguably the country’s leading scholar on the government-speech doctrine, called Kagan’s scholarship on that subject “extremely insightful in examining the intricacies and contradictions of the Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence.”...

The nomination process has become fraught with uncertainty as ideological battles sometimes predominate over honest appraisals on a person’s experience and credentials. Whether confirmed or not, Kagan certainly possesses a deep understanding of the first 45 words of the Bill of Rights.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx?id=21093&SearchString=solicitor_general