298 No Protestants on US Supreme Court. Elena Kagan a political appointee - Petras-

No Protestants on US Supreme Court. Elena Kagan a political appointee  - Petras

(1) With Kagan's Confirmation, no Protestants on US Supreme Court
(2) Elena Kagan a political appointee  - Petras
(3) Elena Kagan's path eased by Jewish Ethnic Networking - Kevin MacDonald
(4) American Jews Proud of Obama Pick for US Supreme Court

(1) With Kagan's Confirmation, no Protestants on US Supreme Court

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 12.05.2010 07:10 PM

The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/a_moment_of_his.html

A moment of history: Kagan's confirmation would mean no Protestants on Supreme Court

May 10, 2010 08:23 PM

By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff

President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court represents a turning point in American religious history: If Kagan is confirmed, the high court will not have a single Protestant member.

Just over half of all Americans are Protestant, while less than one-quarter are Catholic and just 1.7 percent are Jewish, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's US Religious Landscape Survey. But, if Kagan is confirmed to the bench, the nation's highest court -- dominated by Protestants for most of its history -- will be made up of six Catholics and three Jews.

"This whole project of a Protestant America is really going under, and it's going under quickly," said Stephen Prothero , a professor of religion at Boston University and author of "God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World -- and Why Their Differences Matter.

Kagan's nomination, he said, "is an important moment of saying, 'Look, we've gone so far beyond the idea that this is a Protestant country that we can have a court with six Catholics and three Jews."

Martin E. Marty , professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said that these days, the question of whether there should be a distinctly Protestant voice on the court would elicit "a big yawn" from most mainline Protestants.

"I was in an Episcopal church in Chicago on Sunday, and there were a lot of movers and shakers there -- but we didn't sit around after and say, 'How can we get one of us on the Supreme Court?' " he said.

Evangelical Protestants have been slow to embrace, or to feel welcomed by, the elite law schools like Harvard and Yale that have become a veritable requirement for Supreme Court nominees. One reason for this, some scholars say, is because of an anti-intellectual strain within evangelicalism.

"Evangelical Christianity has tended to be a populist religion that's strongly democratic -- in urging people to read the Bible themselves," said Mark A. Noll , a history professor at the University of Notre Dame. "All these are traits that have positive sides, but not for intellectual preparation and education."

But Noll and others say this is changing. Like Catholics and Jews of the last century, evangelicals are increasingly realizing that they need intellectual credentials to auire institutional power in America. Influencing the high court is of special importance to evangelicals because of their opposition to abortion.

"I think the Catholics had a 20-year head start on the... evangelicals in getting more elite credentials," said Richard W. Garnett , a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame.

A half-century ago, Catholics and Jews were the outsiders in the top echelons of the legal and political worlds. But barriers to their advancement have now largely disintegrated, as both groups have made significant strides in educational and professional achievement.

"Education itself became important, with a kind of edge that was not present for most Protestant groups," Noll said.

Republican presidents, seeking Supreme Court nominees with strong educational credentials who oppose abortion rights, have in recent years turned repeatedly to Catholics.

"It's not that every Catholic justice is pro-life, obviously," Garnett said. "But if you were looking for a qualified candidate with elite credentials who was pro-life in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, you were likely to find a lot of Catholics."

Evangelicals sometimes view Catholics as their ideological soulmates -- so President George W. Bush could please his political base by nominating Samuel Alito after his first choice, evangelical Harriet Miers , withdrew from consideration over criticism that she was ill-prepared.

"There was a time that being fearful of Catholics was at the heart of Protestant culture -- that's certainly changed," said David Harrington Watt , a history professor at Temple University.

Democratic presidents, seeking Supreme Court nominees who are reliably liberal, have several times nominated Jewish justices. Bill Clinton appointed both of the court's current Jewish justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg .

Some scholars lament the lack of religious diversity on the court, even though justices generally shrug off the notion that religion affects their jurisprudence.

"We think through ethics and law in our lives, whether or we are Supreme Court justices or not, in light of our backgrounds and religious commitments," Prothero said. "And I think it's a pity to have only two religious traditions represented on the court."Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com

(2) Elena Kagan a political appointee  - Petras

From: James Petras <jpetras@binghamton.edu> Date: 13.05.2010 11:48 AM

Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court: A Barnyard Smell in Chicago, Harvard and Washington

James Petras

May 12, 2010

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_59828.shtml

President Obama has nominated Elena Kagan for Justice of the United States Supreme Court on the basis of an academic publication record, which might give her a fighting chance for tenure at a first rate correspondence law school in the Texas Panhandle.

A review of her published scholarship after almost two decades in and out of academia turns up four law review articles, two brief pieces and several book reviews and in memoriam. There is nothing even remotely resembling a major legal text or research publication.

Her lack-luster academic publication record is only surpassed by her total lack of any practical experience as a judge: zero years in adjudication, unless one accepts the line of her exuberant advocates, who point to Kagan's superb ability in adjudicating among the squabbling faculty at Harvard Law School when she served as Dean. No doubt Kagan had been very busy as the greatest fundraising Law School Dean in Harvard's history ($400 million), which may account for the fact that she never found time to write a single academic article during her nine year tenure (2001-2009).

The criteria for her appointment to the Supreme Court have little to do with academic performance as it is understood today in all major universities. Nor does her total inexperience as a judicial advocate compensate for academic mediocrity.

The evidence points to a purely political appointment based, in part, on social networks and certainly not on her lack of affinity for the agenda of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Kagan's approval of indefinite detention of suspects squares with the extremist restrictions on constitutional freedoms first articulated during the Bush Administration and subsequently upheld by President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder. It is no coincidence that Kagan appointed a notorious Bush torture advocate, the genial Jack Goldsmith, to the Harvard Law faculty.

Elena Kagan's appointment certainly was not based on “diversity”. She will be the third Jew on the Supreme Court and, together with the six Roman Catholics, will decide the most critical cases with far-reaching and profound impact on citizens' rights and protections. For the first time in US history the nation's largest demographic group, the Protestants (of any hue or gender), will have no representative on the Court, thereby excluding the descendents, like retiring Justice Stevens, of the brilliant, strongly secular judicial heritage that formulated the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and its amendments.

Kagan's nomination to the US Supreme Court is not exceptional if we consider many of Bush and now Obama's choices of advisers and officials in top policymaking posts. Many of these officials combined their diplomas from Ivy League universities with their absolutely disastrous performances in public office, which no amount of mass media puff pieces could obscure. These Ivy League mediocrities include the foreign policy advocates for the destructive and unending wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan and the leading economic advisers and officials responsible for the current financial debacles. The names are familiar enough: Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Levey, Greenspan, Axelrod, Emmanuel, Indyk, Ross, Summers, Rubin, et al: Prestigious credentials with mediocre, or worse, performances. What is the basis of their rise? What explains their ascent to the most influential positions in the US power structure?

One hypothesis is nepotism . . . of a certain kind. Elena Kagan got tenure at the august halls of the University of Chicago in 1995 on the basis of one substantive article and one brief piece, neither outstanding. With this underwhelming record of legal scholarship, she became visiting professorship at the Harvard Law School, published only two more articles (one in Harvard Law Review) and received tenure. Prima facie evidence strongly suggests that Kagan's ties to the staunchly Zionist faculty at both Chicago and Harvard Law Schools (and not her intellectual prowess) account for her meteoric promotions to tenure, deanship and now the US Supreme Court, over the heads of hundreds of other highly qualified candidates with far superior academic publication records and broader practical judicial experience.

The public utterances and political writings of innumerable Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, Yale, John Hopkins professors, whether it be on the speculative economy, Israel's Middle East wars, preventative detention, broad presidential powers and constitutional freedoms are marked by a singular mediocrity, mendacity and an excess of hot air reeking of the barnyard.

If you do not qualify on the basis of excellent scholarship or broad-based practical experience, your ethnic tribesman will wax ecstatic over you as a “wonder colleague”, a “superb teacher”, a “brilliant consensus builder” and a “world champion fund raiser”. In other words, if you have the right ethnic connections and political ambitions, they can adjust the criteria for tenure at the University of Chicago, the deanship at Harvard Law School and a lifetime appointment to the US Supreme Court.

Elena Kagan joins a long list of key Obama appointees who have long-standing ties to the pro-Israel power configuration. Like Barack Obama, Elena Kagan started her legal apprenticeship with the Chicago Judge Abner Mitva, an ardent Zionist, who hailed the newly elected President Obama as “America's first Jewish President”, probably his soundest judgment.

The issue of the composition of the US Supreme Court is increasingly crucial for all Americans, who are horrified by Israel's devastation of Gaza, its threats to launch a nuclear attack on Iran and its Fifth Column's efforts to drag us into a third war in ten years. With the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations pressing the compliant US Congress to declare “anti-Zionism” as a form of “anti-Semitism” and “opposition to Israel's policies” as amounting to “support for terrorism”, thus criminalizing Americans critical of Israel, another active pro-Zionist advocate on the Court will provide a legal cover for the advance of Zionist-dictated authoritarianism over the American people.

Yes, Kagan would be another woman on the Supreme Court. Yes, she would probably adjudicate conflicts among the judges and strengthen Obama's police powers. And yes, she would likely favor your indefinite detention if you support the right of Palestinians to struggle (“terrorism”) against the Israeli occupation . . . especially if you defend America against Israel's Fifth Column.

But remember when you apply for Ivy League law school appointment or a top judicial post and your CV lacks the requisite publications or work experience, just ask Judge Abner Mikva or Larry Summers or Rahm Emmanuel for a recommendation. With such support you will shoot ahead of the competition. . . because you have the right ethnic connections.

(3) Elena Kagan's path eased by Jewish Ethnic Networking - Kevin MacDonald

From: Denver Media Service <ron@denvermediaservice.com> Date: 10.05.2010 08:37 PM

Elena Kagan: Jewish Ethnic Networking Eases the Path of a Liberal/Leftist to the Supreme Court

by Kevin MacDonald

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-Kagan.html

A recent LA Times article, “Supreme Court Nominee has admirers left and right,” by David G. Savage and James Oliphant, although masquerading as news, is a brief for the candidacy of Elena Kagan for the position on the Supreme Court vacated by David H. Souter. The article notes that she is well connected to top people in the Obama Administration, and there is effusive praise from two legal bigwigs, Laurence Tribe and Charles Fried, both of Harvard.

Kagan's candidacy raises a number of issues. If nominated and confirmed, there would be three Jewish justices on the Supreme Court — all on the left. Jews are of course always overrepresented among elites — especially on the left, but 33% is high by any standard given that Jews constitute less than 3% of the US population. This is much higher than Jewish representation in the US Senate (13%) and the House of Representatives (~7%). The last time I checked, if there were three Jews on the Supreme Court, the percentage would be about the same as the percentage of Jews among the wealthiest Americans.

Jews as one-third of the Supreme Court seems sure to raise the eyebrows among people like me who think that Jewish identity often makes a big difference in attitudes and behavior. And if there is one area where mainstream Jewish political identity has had a huge effect (besides anything related to Israel), it's in attitudes and behavior related to multiculturalism. This is true of the Jewish mainstream across the entire Jewish political spectrum, from the far left to the neoconservative right. A major theme of The Culture of Critique is that Jewish identities and interests were apparent in all the Jewish-dominated intellectual movements of the left that have rationalized multiculturalism, massive non-White immigration, and the general displacement of Europeans:

Viewed at its most abstract level, a fundamental agenda is thus to influence the European-derived peoples of the United States to view concern about their own demographic and cultural eclipse as irrational and as an indication of psychopathology. (Ch. 5 of The Culture of Critique; emphasis in original)

Kagan seems to have lived a charmed life, with perhaps a whiff (or even a stench) of ethnic networking. At least one of the journalists writing the LA Times panegyric is Jewish (David G. Savage), and the two legal scholars who are quoted in the article (Fried and Tribe) are both Jews. In addition, Kagan was appointed Dean of Harvard Law by Lawrence Summers — also Jewish and with a strong Jewish identity. Summers and Kagan covered for Laurence Tribe when he lifted a passage from another scholar's book without attribution. Ethnic networking is nothing if not reciprocal.

While Jewish activists are doing all they can to promote a Jew for this position, we don't hear a peep from White Protestants — a group that dominated the Supreme Court for 150 years. With Souter's departure, the only White Protestant left on the court is the superannuated Stevens, who is 89 and will doubtless be replaced by an ethnic minority if he retires during the Obama administration. (White males need not apply.) When it comes to playing help-my-tribe battles, White Protestants are completely inept — in fact, they don't even play at all.

Tribe's praise for Kagan is particularly interesting: “She has an excellent chance, and she would be terrific. … She has a masterful command of so many areas of law. And she's been vetted and recently confirmed. Her writing is not voluminous, which is also a plus."

Indeed, her writing is not voluminous at all. In her entire career at the University of Chicago and Harvard — the very apex of elite academic institutions — she has written a grand total of 9 articles. Actually, her scholarly output is even less than that because two of these publications are book reviews and one is a tribute to Thurgood Marshall. When she received tenure at the University of Chicago in 1995, she had exactly two scholarly articles published in law journals — a record that would ordinarily not get her tenure even at quite a few third tier universities much less an elite institution like the University of Chicago.

But on the basis of this record and later work in the Clinton Administration, in 2003 she became the dean of Harvard Law School, the most prestigious law school in the country. She has yet to publish any articles or books since becoming dean. But now her lack of scholarship is called a plus by Laurence Tribe, presumably because her positions on many issues are unknown. (Doubtless if Kagan had a stellar scholarly record, Tribe would have seen it as a major plus.)

Not only does she have a weak record as a scholar, she has yet to argue a case as Solicitor General even though she had the opportunity to do so. Her next opportunity to argue a case will not happen until after the Supreme Court nomination process is over, so we will have no information on how effective she would be in fending off the arguments of the conservative intellectual heavyweights on the Court before this weighty decision is made. On the basis of the arguments she endorsed in the Solomon Amendment case (see below), one must assume that she would not fare well.

Nor are there any other discernible positives. As Savage and Oliphant note, “Kagan does not have the ‘real world' experience in politics. … It is not clear whether she has the "quality of empathy" Obama has said he wants in a nominee. But she has had an uncanny knack for winning important admirers and avoiding enemies in a series of top legal jobs.”

The only thing Kagan has going for her seems to be that important people admire her. She's good at networking, and it would seem that many of her most prominent admirers are other Jews — liberal and conservative. (Tribe and Summers are liberals; Charles Fried is considered a conservative. Fried was Solicitor General in the Reagan Administration but voted for Obama.) Ethnic networking indeed!

This points to corruption in the Jewish sector of the American academic elite. Kagan's path to the academic heights of the legal profession and perhaps to a position on the Supreme Court is not based on a solid record of scholarship or any other relevant experience, but on ethnic boosterism from other Jews. As I noted elsewhere, Jews are represented in elite American academic institutions at levels far higher than can be explained by IQ.

Kagan is a poster girl for Jewish affirmative action. Not only does she have no discernible skills that would warrant her high position as dean of Harvard Law — much less an appointment to the Supreme Court, she is boosted by another Harvard professor (Laurence Tribe) who plagiarized another scholar's work. (Plagiarism seems to run rampant at Harvard Law. Norman Finkelstein provides a credible case that Alan Dershowitz plagiarized others' work in writing The Case for Israel. Charles J. Ogletree Jr., an African American, was involved in double plagiarism: foisting off the plagiarized work of his assistants as his own.) And Kagan was appointed dean of Harvard Law by then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers who has massive ethical problems of his own related to shielding another Harvard professor, his friend and protégé Andrei Shleifer. Shleifer was found liable by a federal court in 2004 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government for his activities during the transition to capitalism in Russia in the 1990s. Summers also accepted $2.7 million in speaking fees from companies that received government bailout money when he later became head of the National Economic Council.

What could we expect from Kagan on the Supreme Court? Kagan has been flagged by conservatives because of an amicus brief she and other law professors wrote seeking to strike down a law that prohibited colleges and universities that ban military recruiting on campus from receiving federal funds. The motive behind the brief signed by Kagan was to protest the military's policy on homosexuality. Their arguments were rejected 8-0 by the Supreme Court, indicating that even the Court liberals thought it was completely outside the mainstream.

This strongly suggests that Kagan would be quite willing to fashion her legal arguments to attain her liberal/left policy goals, and that is exactly what her other writings show. Her 1993 article "Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V," (60 University of Chicago Law Review 873; available on Lexis/Nexis) indicates someone who is entirely on board with seeking ways to circumscribe free speech in the interests of multicultural virtue: “I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.” She acknowledges that the Supreme Court is unlikely to alter its stance that speech based on viewpoint is protected by the First Amendment, but she sees that as subject to change with a different majority: The Supreme Court “will not in the foreseeable future” adopt the view that “all governmental efforts to regulate such speech … accord with the Constitution.” But in her view there is nothing to prevent it from doing so. Clearly, she does not see the protection of viewpoint-based speech as a principle worth preserving or set in stone. Rather, she believes that a new majority could rule that “all government efforts to regulate such speech” would be constitutional. All government efforts.

And until that day comes — doubtless speeded by her arrival on the court, she advocates finding ways to rationalize restrictions on free speech within the current guidelines of the court. Her article proposes a variety of ways that “hate speech” may be restricted without running afoul of current Supreme Court guidelines. For example, she supports the constitutionality of “hate crime” laws that enhance penalties for crimes motivated by racial bias — precisely the sort of law recently passed by the House and now being considered by the Senate. Such laws have been strongly promoted by the organized Jewish community and condemned by conservative legal scholars as creating special victim categories and destroying federalism because they punish acts that are already illegal in the states.

Kagan's conclusion shows where her heart is:

[Efforts to draft restrictions on speech] will not eradicate all pornography or all hate speech from our society, but they can achieve much worth achieving. They, and other new solutions, ought to be debated and tested in a continuing and multi-faceted effort to enhance the rights of minorities and women, while also respecting core principles of the First Amendment.

For Kagan, the crusade to restrict speech is motivated by her feminist and leftist political attitudes. Indeed, her 1993 paper was originally presented at a conference titled, “Speech, Equality, and Harm: Feminist Legal Perspectives on Pornography and Hate Propaganda." She sees her job as a legal scholar to find a way to ensure that these goals are achieved while paying lip service to the legal tradition of the First Amendment. Indeed, she sees heavy-handed attempts to restrict free speech, such as the Stanford speech code, as counter-productive because they make “the forces of hatred into defenders of Constitutional liberty” and because they are so unreasonable they invite criticisms of the rest of Stanford's race and gender policies.

In a revealing comment, she notes that those who want to restrict speech in heavy-handed and unconstitutional ways are motivated by the stubborn failure to close the racial gap:

The magnitude and duration of these inequalities may make them impervious to political (let alone to academic) efforts. We do not know how to solve these problems; we may not even know how to talk (or perhaps we are afraid to talk) about them. So some succumb to the allure of sideshows such as the one involving the Stanford Policy.

Given what many believe is the biological basis of these racial differences and recent reports that the racial gap in education is not narrowing despite the No Child Left Behind law aimed at raising the scores of Blacks and Latinos, I suspect that this temptation to restrict speech will be increasingly irresistible in the future. And if Kagan is on the Supreme Court, we can certainly expect that she would vote for such restrictions. Her heart, as I am sure Obama must know, is definitely in the right place.

They say politics is the art of the possible. For Kagan, law is also the art of the possible. There are no principles. Only better or worse tactics for achieving her policy goals.

Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. Email him.

(4) American Jews Proud of Obama Pick for US Supreme Court

Haaretz (Israel)

http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/u-s-jews-proud-of-obama-supreme-court-nominee-1.289494

"We applaud President Obama for having selected this distinguished lawyer, the statement said, adding that "with her background in academia, private practice, and government service, if confirmed, she will undoubtedly bring an important new perspective to the work of the Court." ?

Experts said Kagan could be expected to pass fairly smoothly through the Senate confirmation process, which can be fraught with political peril. Kagan has been through one Senate confirmation already -- she was confirmed last year for her current position.
An announcement is planned for 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) at the White House. The White House said Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Kagan will be at the event.

If confirmed, Kagan would replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, a leading liberal voice on the court. Like Stevens, Kagan in most cases probably would join the three other liberal justices on the court, which for years has been controlled by a five-member conservative majority.

It will be Obama's second selection to the Supreme Court. Last year, he nominated Sonia Sotomayor and she was confirmed by a 68-31 Senate vote last August. Sotomayor became the first Hispanic to serve on the court.

If confirmed, Kagan would become the fourth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court and this would become the first time that three women are serving on the court at the same time. Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are among the current nine justices.

"With his second Supreme Court pick -- and, to be clear, he will almost certainly have more -- the president is on the way to having had more influence over the court than any president since Reagan, and perhaps even Roosevelt," said Rick Garnett a law professor at University of Notre Dame.

The closely divided high court decides contentious social issues such as abortion and the death penalty and high-stakes business disputes.

As solicitor general, Kagan's job is to represent the U.S. government in cases before the Supreme Court. In that role, she has had a mixed record in business cases.
She supported shareholders in a case about excessive mutual fund fees and backed investors in their securities fraud lawsuit against Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) over its withdrawn Vioxx pain drug. But she opposed foreign investors who want to sue in U.S. courts for transnational securities dealings.

VIGOROUS QUESTIONING LIKELY

Kagan could face vigorous questioning by Republicans on hot-button issues like her opposition to on-campus military recruiting at Harvard because of U.S. policy barring gays from serving openly in the armed forces.

"The Senate needs to explore carefully whether Kagan would indulge her own values and policy preferences as a justice," said Ed Whelan, a former law clerk for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Obama interviewed at least four people for the vacancy, including federal appeals court judges Diane Wood, Merrick Garland and Sidney Thomas. Kagan was considered one of the more moderate choices on Obama's short list of potential court nominees.
As a non-judge, Kagan would break with recent tradition if she joins the high court. Although past presidents' nominees have included politicians and others with non-judicial experience, presidents in recent decades have looked to the federal bench. The last two justices who had not been judges, William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell, joined the Supreme Court in 1972.

Kagan served in the White House of President Bill Clinton, who nominated her for an appeals court seat, but she was never confirmed.

Administration officials are eager to avoid a bitter battle over the court pick before congressional elections in November, where Obama's fellow Democrats will be fighting to keep their strong majorities in Congress.

In March 2009, Kagan was confirmed as U.S. solicitor general by a divided Senate, 61-31. All the "no" votes were cast by Republicans, including Senator Arlen Specter, who has since switched parties to become a Democrat