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Wednesday round-up

Yesterday the full Senate opened debate on Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and a final vote is planned before the end of the week, likely tomorrow. Even though the result is not in doubt, “the floor speeches were contentious at times,” reports the New York Times. Julie Hirschfeld Davis of the Associated Press (via the Washington Post) describes dueling portraits of Kagan as “a highly qualified legal scholar who would add a sorely needed note of fairness and common sense to [the] court” and “an inexperienced, disingenuous nominee who would abuse her post by bending the law to suit a liberal agenda.”

With more Senators revealing their positions on the Kagan nomination, the ultimate vote count is coming into focus. Senators Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Rockefeller (D-W.V.) will support Kagan, reports Politico, while Senator Voinovich (R-Ohio) has announced that he will not (NBC News, the Blog of LegalTimes). At AOL Politics Daily, Patricia Murphy highlights the Senators, like Senator Voinovich, who supported Justice Sotomayor’s nomination but who may not vote for Kagan. According to Roll Call, one such Senator, Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), is “catching a lot of grief from within his party” for being the first Democratic Senator since 1968 to vote against his party’s Supreme Court nominee; to which he responds: “Are they from Nebraska? Then I don’t care.” James Oliphant of the Los Angeles Times concludes that, in the end, Kagan “appears set to receive fewer yes votes than Justice Sonia Sotomayor did.”

The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, the Christian Science Monitor, the Blog of LegalTimes, and the Wall Street Journal all have coverage of the action in the Senate yesterday.

With the support of a majority of Senators nearly assured, Kagan has also won over the public, according to two polls. A CNN poll shows that Kagan has “virtually the same amount of support [54%] that the public gave the two most recent Supreme Court nominees—Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito—just days before they were confirmed by the Senate.” And a new USA Today/Gallup poll also finds that more Americans support Kagan than oppose her, but with a narrower margin of support relative to past nominees than the CNN poll found.

In other Kagan news, the Blog of LegalTimes reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will not be taking a position for or against Kagan’s nomination. The Chamber has endorsed every other nominee since it began reviewing them in 1990, but its endorsement process “did not generate a clear consensus” on Kagan. The Miami Herald editorial board did reach a consensus, however: they urge the Senate to confirm Kagan, and they laud Senator Graham (R-S.C.) for having the “political courage to buck the tide and vote in favor of [Kagan’s] confirmation.” Senator Graham’s explanation of his “yes” vote also attracted the attention of Brandon Bartels at Concurring Opinions, who writes that “Graham is essentially calling for a restoration of a [confirmation] standard from a bygone era.”

Briefly:

  • In an interview with the Associated Press (via NPR), Justice Ginsburg divulged “that she plans to remain on the court for the foreseeable future and still wants to match Justice Louis Brandeis, who retired at age 82.”
  • Laura Litvan reports on President Obama’s “limited success [in] shaping the lower federal courts.” (Bloomberg via the Washington Post)
  • In an “unexpected sign of restraint” in the wake of Citizens United, Goldman Sachs has vowed not to spend the firm’s corporate funds directly on political ads.
  • And finally, Justice Sotomayor will speak about her life experiences at the University of Denver later this month, according to the Denver Post.