Later today, President Obama is expected to nominate U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Surprisingly, the initial opposition is coming from the left rather than from the right. Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional and civil rights litigator and columnist for Salon, has been leading the charge against Kagan :
Perhaps most revealing of all: a new article in The Daily Caller reports on growing criticisms of Kagan among “liberal legal scholars and experts” (with a focus on the work I’ve been doing), and it quotes the progressive legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as follows: ” The reality is that Democrats, including liberals, will accept and push whomever Obama picks .” Yesterday on Twitter , Matt Yglesias supplied the rationale for this mentality: ”Argument will be simple: Clinton & Obama like and trust [Kagan], and most liberals (myself included) like and trust Clinton & Obama.”
Just think about what that means. If the choice is Kagan, you’ll have huge numbers of Democrats and progressives running around saying, in essence: ”I have no idea what Kagan thinks or believes about virtually anything, and it’s quite possible she’ll move the Court to the Right, but I support her nomination and think Obama made a great choice.” In other words, according to Chemerinksy and Yglesias, progressives will view Obama’s choice as a good one by virtue of the fact that it’s Obama choice . Isn’t that a pure embodiment of mindless tribalism and authoritarianism? Democrats love to mock the Right for their propensity to engage in party-line, close-minded adherence to their Leaders, but compare what conservatives did with Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers to what progressives are almost certain to do with Obama’s selection of someone who is, at best, an absolute blank slate. [emphasis in original]
In fairness, Kagan certainly seems to be more qualified than Miers. But it would be hard to argue that she was the best qualified choice for the highest court in the land.
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