ABSTRACT
On May 10, 2010, President Barack Obama formally nominated then Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Almost three months later, the United States Senate voted to confirm the president’s nominee by a 63–37 vote. Much of the media coverage of the Kagan appointment focused on the confirmation process—the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings, debate among political pundits over the kind of justice Kagan might be, the possibility of a Republican-led filibuster, and the final vote on Kagan’s nomination. While the confirmation stage of judicial nominations is certainly an interesting process fraught with partisan politics, many of the most important considerations in the judicial nomination process happened before President Obama officially nominated a candidate to take the seat being vacated by Justice John Paul Stevens.
