Kagan warns the Supreme Court's 'middle position' may be gone

Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

(Image credit: Allison Shelley/Getty Images)

last updated 6 October 2018

Retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor each served as someone "who found the center or people couldn't predict in that sort of way," Justice Elena Kagan said Friday as nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation looked certain to succeed. She does not expect Kavanaugh to follow in their footsteps as a swing voter.

"It's not so clear that — I think going forward, that sort of middle position — it's not so clear whether we'll have it," she continued. "All of us need to be aware of that — every single one of us — and to realize how precious the court's legitimacy is. It's an incredibly important thing for the court to guard is this reputation of being impartial, being neutral, and not being simply extension of a terribly polarizing process."

Kagan spoke during a conference at Princeton University with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who struck a more hopeful note. "We have to rise above partisanship in our personal relationships," she said of the court. "We have to treat each other with respect and dignity and with a sense of amicability that the rest of the world doesn't often share," Sotomayor added. "If you start from the proposition that there's something good in everyone it's a lot easier to get along with them."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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