Much will be pored over and found and reported on Elena Kagan in the coming months. Right now the important bit is this: She’s a former Harvard Law dean, current U.S. solicitor general and President Obama’s choice to sit on the highest court in the land. Oh, and Thurgood Marshall called her “Shorty.”

Washington Post:

Even though the solicitor general is often called “the 10th justice,” she would be the first to join the court since Thurgood Marshall in 1967. It would be especially sweet for Kagan, who clerked for the civil rights icon in 1987-88 and has referred to him as “the most important lawyer, I think, of the 20th century.” He nicknamed her “Shorty.”

“She is a first-rate legal scholar, but she brings much more than that,” Walter Dellinger, an acting solicitor general under Clinton, said when she was nominated as the first woman to hold his old job. “She knows government, and she knows how to run institutions.”

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#barack obama#clinton#elena kagan#government#History#law#supreme court