Solicitor General Elena Kagan (photo by Steve Bagley / Main Justice)
Jeffrey Toobin has made his prediction.
For the March 22 issue of the New Yorker magazine, the legal correspondent wrote an 8,600-word profile of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens titled: “After Stevens: What will the Supreme Court be like without its liberal leader?”
In a National Public Radio interview Monday, Toobin predicted that Solicitor General Elena Kagan will replace the 89-year-old judge after he retires, possibly at the end of the current term in June 2010.
“They [the Obama administration has] very much suspected that a vacancy is imminent and I think they do have a candidate in mind and frankly I think I know who it is. I think it’s going to be Elena Kagan, the current solicitor general and the former dean of Harvard Law School,” Toobin said.
He continued, “She has a reputation as a consensus builder. She is someone who brought vigorously fighting factions at Harvard together. She worked in the Clinton administration and had good relationships with Republicans in Congress at the time. She has never been a judge, which I think is a point in her favor for Obama. There are all former judges on the court now, and I think Obama wants people of more different backgrounds. So I think she’s the likely choice.”
[...] It is far from clear who Obama will chose to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, but Elena Kagan, his current Solicitor General and former Dean of Harvard Law School, is on every list of the most likely replacements. Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog has declared her “the prohibitive front-runner” and predicts: “On October 4, 2010, Elena Kagan Will Ask Her First Question As A Supreme Court Justice.” The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin made the same prediction. [...]
[...] It is far from clear who Obama will chose to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, but Elena Kagan, his current Solicitor General and former Dean of Harvard Law School, is on every list of the most likely replacements. Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog has declared her “the prohibitive front-runner” and predicts: ”On October 4, 2010, Elena Kagan Will Ask Her First Question As A Supreme Court Justice.” The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin made the same prediction. [...]