Elena kagan biography personal

Recent Decisions by Justice Kagan

Biographical Data

Birth, Residence, and Family

Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court was born in New York, New York, on April 28,

Education

She received an A.B., summa cum laude, in from Princeton University. She attended Worcester College, Oxford University, as Princeton's Daniel M. Sachs Graduating Fellow, and received an M. Phil. in In , she earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude, where she was supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Government service

She served as a law clerk to Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from She served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court of the United States during the Term. From , she was associate counsel to President Clinton and then served as deputy assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council. President Obama nominated her to serve as the 45th Solicitor General of the United States and she was confirmed on March 19, President Obama nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on May 10, , and she assumed this role on August 7,

Law Practice

She worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly, LLP, from She became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School in and a tenured professor of law in

Academic career

She joined Harvard Law School as a visiting professor in and became professor of law in She was the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law and was appointed the 11th dean of Harvard Law School in

Source: U.S. Supreme Court

The first female Solicitor General of the United States and now an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Elena Kagan is a prominent legal scholar and jurist who has advocated for justice and equality since childhood.

Born in New York City on April 28, , Elena Kagan is the daughter of Robert Kagan, an attorney, and Gloria (Gittelman) Kagan, a school teacher. Kagan’s father represented the rights of tenants in the city’s many co-op conversions and her mother was known as a demanding but dedicated teacher at Hunter College Elementary School. Their work in law and education inspired Kagan’s future career path, as well as that of her two brothers, who are both school teachers.

Kagan was raised Jewish and her family belonged to Lincoln Square Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. A top student at her Hebrew school, she strongly desired to mark her coming of age with a bat mitzvah when she was 12 years old. However, her Orthodox synagogue had never held a bat mitzvah, as only boys were allowed to observe their bar mitzvahs in the Orthodox tradition at the time. Jewish girls were just beginning to celebrate bat mitzvahs in the early s, mostly in Reform and Conservative Jewish synagogues, and Kagan advocated for the same opportunity as her male peers. Though her ceremony took place on a Friday evening rather than the traditional Saturday morning, Kagan’s service in May was Lincoln Square Synagogue’s first formal bat mitzvah.

Kagan went to Hunter College High School, where she served as the president of the student government. In her high school yearbook, she is pictured dressed in a judge’s robe with a gavel, alongside a quote from Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. After graduating in , Kagan attended Princeton University. She studied history and served as the editorial chair of The Daily Princetonian, the campus newspaper. Kagan graduated summa cum laude in and earned a fellowship from Princeton to study philosophy at Worcester College (part of O

US Supreme Court justice since

This article is about the U.S. Supreme Court justice. For the Russian writer with the same birth name, see Elena Rzhevskaya.

Elena Kagan (KAY-guhn; born April 28, ) is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was appointed in by President Barack Obama and is the fourth woman to serve on the Court.

Kagan was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from Princeton University, Worcester College, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, she clerked for a federal Court of Appeals judge and for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel, and later as a policy adviser under PresidentBill Clinton. After a nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which expired without action, she became a professor at Harvard Law School and was later named its first female dean.

In , Kagan became the first female solicitor general of the United States. The following year, President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy arising from the impending retirement of Just

Selected Opinions by Justice Kagan:

Topic:Lawsuits & Legal Procedures

When an amendment to a complaint excises the federal-law claims that enabled removal, the federal court loses its supplemental jurisdiction over the related state-law claims. The case must therefore return to state court.

Topic:Free Speech

The First Amendment offers protection when an entity engaging in expressive activity, including compiling and curating others’ speech, is directed to accommodate messages it would prefer to exclude. Also, a state may not interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance.

Topic:Criminal Trials & Prosecutions

When an expert in a criminal trial conveys an absent analyst's statements in support of their opinion, and the statements provide that support only if true, the statements come into evidence for their truth. If those statements are also testimonial, the Confrontation Clause will bar their admission.

Topic:Copyrights

A copyright owner possessing a timely claim for infringement is entitled to damages, no matter when the infringement occurred.

Topic:Labor & Employment

Although an employee must show some harm from a forced job transfer to prevail in a Title VII claim, they do not need to show that the injury satisfies a significance test.

Topic:Free Speech

Although true threats of violence are outside the bounds of First Amendment protection, the First Amendment still requires proof that the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of their statements. However, the state only needs to prove recklessness, which means that the defendant consciously disregarded a