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on Aug 6, 2010 at 11:33 am
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Yesterday afternoon, the Senate confirmed Elena Kagan as the 112th Justice of the Supreme Court by a vote of sixty-three to thirty-seven.  NPR, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the WSJ Law Blog, the CQ Researcher Blog, USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor all have coverage of the vote, which makes Kagan the fourth woman to serve on the Court.

A record of the roll call is available here; at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr tallies up the total votes for and against the last four nominees, while Politico’s Josh Gerstein recaps the vote breakdown as well.   Meanwhile, McClatchy’s James Rosen (via the Miami Herald) points out that Senators Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, “offset each other’s votes” on Kagan’s confirmation, with Graham becoming one of only five Republican Senators to vote in her favor.

Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal compares the respective paths that Kagan and Chief Justice Roberts followed to reach the Court, and the WSJ Law Blog’s Ashby Jones follows up on Bravin’s commentary.

In the wake of Wednesday’s ruling by a federal district judge striking down California’s Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, news reports continue to speculate on whether the issue will ultimately reach the Court.  Robert Barnes and Sandhya Somashekhar have coverage in the Washington Post, while in the San Francisco Chronicle, Bob Egelko quotes professor Rick Hasen as saying that Wednesday’s ruling “was written primarily for one pair of eyes – Justice Kennedy’s.”  The Associated Press more cautiously posits that “the case could easily end with a politically conservative panel of the 9th Circuit reinstating the marriage ban and the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to get involved.”  And at ACSBlog, Yeshiva University law professor Edward Stein similarly addresses the possibility that the Supreme Court will not review the case.  Finally, at his Jost on Justice blog, Kenneth Jost discussed the first “Brandeis brief,” emphasizing “facts, not legal abstractions,” and he explores the extent to which federal district judge Vaughn Walker’s opinion in the Proposition 8 case reflects this strategy.

Briefly:

  • Following Kagan’s confirmation, Bill Lucey provides an array of facts and figures about the history of the Court at The Morning Delivery.

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