Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan opens up about privacy, judicial diversity and public opinion

Elena Kagan in High School

Tal Kopan of Politico reported on Kagan's Yitzhak Rabin Memorial lecture and her answers to subsequent questions.

I don’t think any of us make our decisions by reading polls,” Kagan said. “One’s sense of what to do as a judge is bounded in some way by the society in which one lives” and the political process of getting appointed, she said.
     Still, the justice said, “One does think long and hard as a judge -- and I’m not sure I’ve ever been in this position --… before you do something that you think is required by law that would be incredibly disruptive to society, and that’s where great wisdom is called for.”
     One issue Kagan did cite as increasingly likely to come before the court is privacy, especially in a changing world.
     Praising her predecessor Louis Brandeis for his prescience on the issue, Kagan said he “understood how new technologies interfere with privacy, which I think will be one of the most important issues before the court in the decades to come.”

     Kagan conceded that “there are a lot of ways the court is not very diverse.” Every Supreme Court Justice is either Catholic or Jewish and a graduate of either Harvard or Yale. Four are from New York City; Justice Kennedy is the only judge from the West Coast.
     Kagan also categorized what she considers the two types of dissent and revealed that she spent three days this fall in Wyoming hunting with Justice Scalia. AKSARBENT doesn't think this is a good idea and neither does Wonkette. We think Scalia should stick to hunting with Dick Cheney.