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Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
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Elena Kagan is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, nominated by President Barack Obama in 2010. Uniquely, she is the only current Justice with no prior experience as a judge before her elevation to the Supreme Court. Instead, she built a formidable career in academia and the executive branch, serving as the Dean of Harvard Law School and the first female Solicitor General of the United States. Kagan is widely regarded as the most gifted and persuasive writer on the Court. Her jurisprudence is highly pragmatic; she frequently attempts to build consensus and forge narrow, moderate rulings with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh. However, as the Court lurched rightward, her role shifted from consensus-builder to a sharp, analytical dissenter. She was a devastating critic of the Court's decision to overturn *Chevron* deference, fiercely defending the necessity of agency expertise. In 2024 and 2025, she became the only sitting Justice to publicly demand the creation of an independent enforcement mechanism for the Supreme Court's ethics code.
First female Solicitor General of the United States (2009–2010), representing the federal government before the Supreme Court
First female Dean of Harvard Law School (2003–2009), credited with pacifying the deeply fractured ideological factions among the faculty
Authored the blistering dissent in *Loper Bright*, defending the administrative state and warning that the Court was aggressively seizing power from the executive and legislative branches
Her unprecedented, highly public calls in 2024 for an independent committee to enforce the Supreme Court's ethics code exposed deep, bitter rifts within the Court, putting her in direct, public opposition to Justices Alito and Thomas
Her initial nomination faced some progressive skepticism due to her lack of a judicial paper trail and her centrist, institutionalist approach at Harvard Law School, though she quickly cemented her liberal credentials on the bench
News articles featuring Elena Kagan
Highly respected across the ideological spectrum for her unparalleled, conversational, and accessible legal writing style
