Editorial: Senate should confirm Kagan, then kill hearings (Dallas Morning News, 07/14/10)
" A number of legal conservatives have lined up behind the former solicitor general, including former special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and Stanford Law School professor Michael McConnell. We doubt they would back a wild-eyed radical out to remake the Constitution. We also prefer the fact that she has not been a sitting judge, as every other member of the current Supreme Court had been before reaching this bench. Perhaps her background will help bring just a whiff of diversity of experience."

Senate should confirm Kagan, move on (Baltimore Sun, 07/13/10)
Prof. Carl Tobias: "the Senate should promptly confirm Ms. Kagan and move on to fill the 99 present lower federal court vacancies. The upper chamber can start by swiftly confirming the 22 judicial nominees whom the Judiciary Committee has approved, 13 of whom had no opposition, but on all of whom senators have placed secret holds."

Our View: Qualified Kagan deserves quick confirmation (Journal Star [Peoria, IL], 07/11/10)
"Kagan also didn't say or do anything to disqualify herself while under the microscope. Her performance at the hearings exposed a sharp intellect and quick wit. ... Kagan is qualified. Barring any 11th-hour surprises, she deserves a swift confirmation."

Kagan's courtly caution (Indianapolis Star [IN] , 07/11/10)
Op-Ed columnist Dan Carpenter: "With the possible exception of elections and the big money that corrupts them, there is no mightier engine of social change than the judiciary.... The issue, as I've said ad nauseam, is not judicial activism vs. judicial restraint. It is the direction of the activism. Under Earl Warren, it was toward the little guy. Under William Rehnquist and John Roberts, it has skewed toward corporate power "

Our View - Empathy remains an essential part of a judge's role (Iowa City Press-Citizen, 07/09/10)
"During her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last week, U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan helped remind everyone watching that the courts have an important role to play whenever the other two branches of government let the people down. Ironically, it was some of her least supportive Republican interrogators -- including Sen. Chuck Grassley -- who helped Kagan drive that key point home. In their repeated attempts to link Kagan's judicial philosophy to that of the man she clerked for decades ago -- Justice Thurgood Marshall -- these senators unsuccessfully tried to argue against the standard for judicial empathy that President Obama said he was looking for when appointing both Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Court. ... During her confirmation hearings, Kagan proved she is well-qualified to sit on the highest court in the land -- both in terms of her knowledge of the law and in terms of her recognition of the many factors that go into rendering a legal ruling. The Senate should confirm her."

Setting the record straight on Thurgood Marshall  (New Pittsburgh Courier [PA], 07/07/10)
George E. Curry: "Interestingly, opponents of Kagan have adopted the same guilt-by-association tactic used against Thurgood Marshall when he was first nominated to the Supreme Court. In that instance, political opponents tried to link him to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was not such a beloved figure in some circles at the time. Critics ignored tension between King, who believed in street protests, and the more conservative Marshall, who thought such issues should be resolved in court. The Senate confirmed Marshall by a vote of 69-11. Today, in an effort to derail Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Senate Republicans are trying to make her appointment a referendum on Thurgood Marshall, a legal and civil rights icon. As his son, Thurgood Jr., noted in a column last Friday in the Washington Post, “Two former [Marshall] clerks, Ralph K. Winter and Douglas Ginsburg, were nominated to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan. Those nominations did not prompt the kind of harsh innuendo to which we have been subjected to this week.”"

Editorial: Kagan comes off as competent and reserved (St. Petersburg Times [FL] , 07/06/10)
"Nothing has raised serious red flags, and later this month she should be confirmed by the Senate.... One of the odder aspects of the hearing was the focus by Republican senators on the judicial philosophy of Thurgood Marshall. ...Marshall was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 69-11 in 1967, but the current crop of Republican senators apparently would not have concurred....Despite Kagan's stellar resume and the sparsity of her writings that might be objected to by conservatives, Kagan is likely to attract few Republican votes."

Editorial: Elena Kagan will get it right (Daily Home [Talladega, AL], 07/06/10)
"[I]t looks as though Elena Kagan is well on her way to becoming a justice of the United States Supreme Court. And despite of the often curt, bordering on rude, questioning from Republican senators, Kagan never lost her cool and never gave away how she might rule on cases that make it to the highest court in the land. That is how it should be."

An activist approach to the Kagan confirmation (Oregonian, 07/06/10)
David Sarasohn: "From last Monday to last Wednesday, Kagan shifted from a threat who would be too ready to change laws from the bench to a danger because she would be too reluctant to overrule Congress. ...By the end, it was clear that committee Republicans were alarmed by activist judges, but not entirely clear what they meant by activist judges. Fortunately, there was the explanation offered by Cornyn in a newspaper column, “It is reasonable to worry that Kagan is a judicial activist simply because President Obama nominated her.” That at least cleared things up: An activist justice is a justice nominated by a Democratic president."

A judicial change to believe in (Washington Post, 07/05/10)
E.J. Dionne Jr.: "Something momentous has happened to our struggle over the Supreme Court's role when Republicans largely give up talking about "judicial activism," when liberals speak of the importance of democracy and deference to elected officials, and when judges are no longer seen as baseball umpires. All these things transpired during Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings last week, ... Kagan did lay out a clear judicial philosophy that (1) sees courts as having an obligation to defer to the choices of elected officials except in the most extreme cases and (2) puts the lie to Chief Justice John Roberts's notion that judges are mere "umpires," as if their task was, in Kagan's cutting word, to be "robotic." And it was Republican senators who seemed to be begging her to be a judicial activist and overturn the enactments of Congress."

Our Opinion: Process, not nominee, under fire (Indianapolis Star [IN] , 07/05/10)
"Even Kagan's critics, who have been relatively quiet to date, concede that she's a highly intelligent and accomplished legal scholar. Now the nation's solicitor general, she previously served as dean of the Harvard Law School."

The Tribune's View: Elena Kagan; Time to get on with it (Columbia Daily Tribune [MO] , 07/05/10)
"Kagan is likely to move the court slightly to the right because she will replace one of the panel’s most liberal members, Justice John Paul Stevens. At most her appointment will retain the status quo. This division comes into play only once in a while on eminently debatable issues where sound reasoning and understanding of the law are the coveted ingredients of decision-making. Clearly, Kagan can fill this role. She will be nobody’s rubber stamp any more than any other justice"

Editorial: Confirm Elena Kagan (Washington Post, 07/04/10)
"Elena Kagan showed herself to be an intellectually gifted person with an impressive grasp of a wide array of legal matters. She exhibited an admirable judicial temperament that allowed her to stay cool and engaged despite at times hostile questioning. The former Harvard Law School dean and current U.S. solicitor general should be confirmed, and by a wide margin. ... Ms. Kagan also argued that the principles ensconced in the Constitution "were meant to be interpreted over time, to be applied to new situations and new factual contexts." ... Ms. Kagan has been more of a pragmatist than an ideologue, the type of person who not only tolerates but invites and appreciates diversity of opinion."

Editorial: Confirm Kagan (Toledo Blade [OH] , 07/04/10)
"She said everything about general principles that her critics would want her to say, pledging fairness and non-political impartiality. As for the fear of her embracing outcomes-based judging (apparently the new catch phrase for activist judges), she said: "To be a results-oriented judge is the worst kind of judge you can be."... The hearings showed that Elena Kagan is eminently qualified to join the Supreme Court. She should be promptly confirmed by the Senate."

The American Conservatism of Thurgood Marshall: The Elena Kagan hearings have wrongly portrayed him as an extremist.  (Wall Street Journal, 07/03/10)
Juan Williams: "Thankfully, Ms. Kagan appears to have escaped any damage from these attempts to paint her as the second coming of this devilish caricature of her former mentor. But the justice's own legacy took some hits, and the truth about his record needs to be set straight before this distortion becomes fixed in the public mind. ... on the high court, Marshall always tailored his opinions to adhere to constitutional principles—not political ideology. ... Marshall's fidelity to the Constitution was evident outside the court as well."