Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she served as a law clerk, called her, Ms. Kagan once wrote, “to my face and I imagine also behind my back, ‘Shorty.’ ”
And if she is confirmed by the Senate, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will welcome Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court lectern as “General Kagan,” the first female solicitor general.
The solicitor general, who is the only federal official required by statute to be “learned in the law” and is sometimes referred to informally as “the 10th justice,” supervises appellate litigation involving the federal government and presents the government’s views to the Supreme Court.
Ms. Kagan, 48, is dean of Harvard Law School. She has a powerful and varied résumé and has produced a substantial paper trail. But she has provided few clues about where she stands on the great legal issues of the day, notably the Bush administration’s broad assertions of unilateral executive power in areas like detention, surveillance, interrogation and rendition.
She did offer a glimpse of her views in a 2001 article in The Harvard Law Review that considered the “unitary executive” theory.
The phrase is sometimes used as shorthand for the Bush administration’s assertion that it has broad powers that cannot be limited by Congress or the courts. In her article, Ms. Kagan addressed an earlier and narrower meaning of the phrase, one made popular during the Reagan administration, concerning the scope of the president’s power to control the executive branch itself.
She found that such presidential control “expanded dramatically during the Clinton presidency,” a development she largely welcomed. But she said Congress, experts and interest groups should also play a role in informing the executive branch’s actions.
“I do not espouse the unitarian position,” Ms. Kagan wrote. “President Clinton’s assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan’s assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.”
Ms. Kagan, whose scholarly interests include administrative law and the First Amendment, is widely credited with bringing harmony and star faculty members to the notoriously dysfunctional Harvard Law School.
David Kessler, a third-year student who is president of the school’s student government, said Ms. Kagan “has an exceptionally positive reputation.”
“She’s always been both pragmatic and fair,” Mr. Kessler said.
Ms. Kagan served as a lawyer and policy adviser under President Bill Clinton, who nominated her to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That nomination stalled in the Senate.
Ms. Kagan has never argued a case before the Supreme Court, a gap likely to be a subject at her confirmation hearing.
Lincoln Caplan, author of “The Tenth Justice: The Solicitor General and the Rule of Law,” said Ms. Kagan would bring exceptional qualifications to the job, including “her legal scholarship and her hands-on experience in the executive branch, as well as her obvious intelligence, skills as an administrator, problem-solver and broker, and extensive relationships in the part of the legal culture that matters to the solicitor general.”
“I also suspect she’ll turn out to be an impressive oral advocate,” Mr. Caplan said.
Both Ms. Kagan and President-elect Barack Obama attended Harvard Law School, though their time there did not overlap.
In an e-mailed note to faculty members, students and alumni on Monday, Ms. Kagan wrote of her nomination that “it adds a special touch of sweetness to the occasion that the person making the nomination, in whose capacity for greatness I deeply believe, is himself a member of the group to which I am writing.”
The nomination makes Ms. Kagan an early front-runner for a seat on the Supreme Court. Justice Marshall was solicitor general before he was appointed to the court in 1967.
Most of Ms. Kagan’s legal writings are dense, hedged and moderate. But in a 1995 review of a book on Senate confirmation fights, she made a statement she may come to regret.
“When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues,” she wrote, “the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce.” But she also described “the safest and surest route to the prize.” The trick, she said, is “alternating platitudinous statement and judicious silence.”