Newsmax.com
05 Aug 2010
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed Elena Kagan Thursday as the Supreme Court’s 112th justice and fourth woman, selecting a scholar with a reputation for brilliance, a dry sense of humor and a liberal legal bent.
The vote was 63-37 for President Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed retired Justice John Paul Stevens.
Five Republicans joined all but one Democrat and the Senate’s two independents to support Kagan. In a rarely practiced ritual reserved for the most historic votes, senators sat at their desks and stood to cast their votes with “ayes” and “nays.”
Kagan watched the vote with her Justice Department colleagues in the solicitor general’s conference room, the White House said.
Kagan isn’t expected to alter the ideological balance of the court, where Stevens was considered a leader of the liberals.
But the two parties clashed over her nomination. Republicans argued that Kagan was a political liberal who would be unable to be impartial. Democrats defended her as a highly qualified legal scholar.
She is the first Supreme Court nominee in nearly 40 years with no experience as a judge, and her swearing-in will mark the first time in history that three women will serve on the nine-member court together.
Her lack of judicial experience was the stated reason for one fence-sitting Republican, Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, to announce his opposition to her confirmation Thursday, just hours before the vote.
Though calling her “brilliant,” Brown, who had been seen as a potential GOP supporter, said she was missing the necessary background to serve as a justice.
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