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Senate Committee on the Judiciary Holds a Hearing on the Elena Kagan Nomination June 29, 2010 Speakers: Sen

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Senate Committee on the Judiciary Holds a Hearing on the Elena Kagan Nomination June 29, 2010 Speakers: Sen SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY HOLDS A HEARING ON THE ELENA KAGAN NOMINATION JUNE 29, 2010 SPEAKERS: SEN. PATRICK J. LEAHY, D-VT. CHAIRMAN SEN. HERB KOHL, D-WIS. SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, D-CALIF. SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD, D-WIS. SEN. CHARLES E. SCHUMER, D-N.Y. SEN. RICHARD J. DURBIN, D-ILL. SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, D-R.I. SEN. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, D-MD. SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR, D-MINN. SEN. EDWARD E. "TED" KAUFMAN, D-DEL. SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, D-PA. SEN. AL FRANKEN, D-MINN. SEN. JEFF SESSIONS, R-ALA. RANKING MEMBER SEN. ORRIN G. HATCH, R-UTAH SEN. CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, R-IOWA SEN. JON KYL, R-ARIZ. SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, R-S.C. SEN. JOHN CORNYN, R-TEXAS SEN. TOM COBURN, R-OKLA. WITNESSES: ELENA KAGAN, NOMINATED TO BE AN ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT [*] LEAHY: Good morning, everyone. Today -- today, Justice John Paul Stevens’ resignation from the Supreme Court takes effect, and I appreciated your recognition of his service to the country in your opening statement, Solicitor General Kagan. He was the first person -- the first Supreme Court nomination I was able to vote on as a very young and very junior member of the United States Senate. But you spoke eloquently about the rule of law, securing the blessings of liberty, about the Constitution, and about your respect for all three branches of our democratic government. And I appreciate your pledge to consider every case impartially, modestly, with a commitment to principle, and in -- and in accordance with law. So this morning, we begin our questioning. Senator Sessions and I talked about this. Each senator -- Republicans and Democrats -- will have a 13-minute round, and we will go alternate back and forth. So I will begin the first round. Solicitor General Kagan -- and you can start the clock -- Solicitor General Kagan, you spoke yesterday about your parents, children of immigrants, first in their families to attend college. I was struck when you said that your mother didn’t learn English until ready to go to school, and I can equate (ph) with that, as it’s the same with my mother and my wife. Before we get to questions about the important role that the Supreme Court plays in American lives, do you want to share with us some additional thoughts about the values your parents taught you that put you on the path to teaching and law and public service? Because that may give us a better idea of who you are. KAGAN: Oh, gosh, Chairman Leahy, thank you for giving me that opportunity. That’s -- that’s a wonderful opportunity. My parents, of course, were -- I mean, as they were loving, wonderful parents, but they were also people who worked hard for their communities. And I think that’s what -- what I most took away from them, is the -- the value of -- of -- of serving the communities that you live in, of serving other people. And I guess I -- I got a little bit from each side. My father, I said, was a lawyer. He was a lawyer for ordinary people. He -- he was the kind of lawyer who, if you needed a will drawn up, he would draw up your will, and if you had problems on your taxes, he would help you with that. And then one of the things that he did quite a lot of was he helped tenants in New York City’s -- the neighborhood we lived in was in the process of some change as I was growing up, and -- and many people were sort of being forced out of their homes. And -- and he made it really part of his legal work to ensure that either they could stay in their homes or at least, if -- if they did need to move to another neighborhood, they could -- they could take something with them to establish a good life there. And he was also a person who spent an enormous amount of time thinking about that neighborhood. He was involved in -- in lots of community boards and citizen groups of various kinds, thinking about environmental projects and land use projects. He really treated that neighborhood of New York City as just -- you know, he -- he just so much cared about the welfare of it and -- and poured his heart and soul into trying to improve it. And I think what I learned from him was just the value of public service, was just the value of doing what you can in your neighborhood or in your nation or wherever you can find that opportunity, to -- to help other people and to serve the nation, so that’s -- that’s what I most took away from my father. My -- my mother was -- she -- I said yesterday she was a kind of legendary teacher. She -- she died only a couple of years ago. And my brothers and I, we expected a small funeral. We expected not very many people to attend, a lot of -- I don’t have a large family. And, instead, just tons and tons of people showed up, and we couldn’t figure out who they all were. And it turned out that these people who were then middle-aged, you know, 30-year-olds, 40- year- olds, whatever, they had had my mother as a sixth-grade teacher decades ago, and they were people who just wanted to come and pay their respects, because they kept on coming up to me and my brothers and saying, "At the age of 12, your mother taught me that I could do anything." And she was really demanding. She was a really tough teacher. You know, it was not -- you didn’t -- you didn’t slide by in Mrs. Kagan’s class. But -- but she -- she -- she got the most out of people, and she changed people’s lives because -- because of that. And if I look at my own career in this kind of strange way, not planned, but in this sort of strange way, I think, you know, part of my life is my father and part of my life is my mother, that part of my life has been in public service -- I’ve been really blessed with the opportunities I’ve had to -- to work in government and to serve this nation -- and then part of my life is teaching, which I take enormous pleasure and joy from. I mean, the -- I’m -- I’m looking over your right -- your left shoulder, right on my side, and there’s a student of mine right there, and -- and maybe there are some other students that are around the room. And -- and it’s -- it’s a kind of great thing. LEAHY: We’re doing our best to make Jeremy (ph) blush (inaudible) (LAUGHTER) But, you know, these -- these things that I -- I mean, each one of us I think can speak about what our parents -- what they brought to us. And it seems to me they gave you some pretty strong values. And so we -- that speaks about who you are as a person. And now we go to some of your legal abilities. And some have criticized your background or your legal arguments, even going to what did you write on -- on college papers. The chairman of the Republican National Committee criticized you last month for agreeing with Justice Thurgood Marshall’s observation that our Constitution as originally drafted was imperfect. The criticism surprised me, because everything you read about the founders, they knew that they would lay down something that would not cover every foreseeable thing. I mean, how could they possibly foresee what the country is today? They were -- they wrote in broad terms. They couldn’t foresee every challenge. So what’s the -- what’s your response to this criticism of you that is made because you agreed with Justice Marshall? How -- how would you describe the way the Constitution has been amended since it was originally drafted? KAGAN: Well, Justice Leahy, the framers were incredibly wise men. And if we -- if we always remember that, we’ll do pretty well, because part of their wisdom was that they wrote a Constitution for the ages. And this was very much in their mind; this was part of their consciousness. You know, even that phrase that I quoted yesterday from the preamble of the Constitution, I said the Constitution was to secure blessings of liberty. I didn’t quote the -- the next part of that phrase. It said blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity. So they were looking towards the future. They were looking generations and generations and generations ahead and knowing that they were writing a Constitution for all that period of time and that life -- and that circumstances and that the world would change, just as it had changed in their own lives very dramatically, so they knew all about change. And they wrote a Constitution, I think, that has all kinds of provisions in it, so there are some that are very specific provisions. It just says what you’re supposed to do and how things are supposed to work. So it says, to be a senator, you have to be 30 years old. And -- and that just means you have to be 30 years old, and it doesn’t matter if people mature earlier. It doesn’t matter if people’s life spans change. You just have to be 30 years old, because that’s what they wrote, and that’s what they meant, and that’s what we should do.
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