In Her First Year on the Court, Kagan Shows Her Friendly Side and Her Sarcastic Side
Justice Elena Kagan has reached out to her colleagues during her first year on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Washington Post offers several examples. “She’s been skeet-shooting with Antonin Scalia,” the story says, “to the opera with [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg, to dinner with Sonia Sotomayor, shared the stage at a Harvard Law School reunion with Anthony M. Kennedy and this summer showed up at a New York University law school conference in Buenos Aires with Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia.”
Despite the friendly demeanor, Kagan has at times shown a more sarcastic and cutting side in her opinions, the story says. Some critics have questioned whether her writing was sometimes “too brash for a rookie,” the story says.
The Post offers an example of Kagan’s writing style, on display in her dissent to an opinion striking down Arizona’s system of public financing for political campaigns. Kagan wrote that justices in the majority thought they had found a smoking gun. “But the only smoke here is the majority’s, and it is the kind that goes with mirrors,” Kagan wrote.
