Kagan joins the high court

Elena Kagan became the fourth woman ever to take a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, after winning Senate confirmation largely along party lines.

Elena Kagan last week became the fourth woman ever to take a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, after winning Senate confirmation on a 63–37 vote largely along party lines. All but five Republicans opposed Kagan as unfit for the court, arguing that she was a liberal ideologue who lacked any judicial experience. The first female dean of Harvard Law School, the 50-year-old New Yorker most recently served as U.S. solicitor general.

Kagan, who replaces liberal justice John Paul Stevens, is not expected to alter the court’s ideological mix of five conservatives and four liberals. But for the first time in history, the Supreme Court includes no Protestants; it now consists of six Catholics and three Jews, including Kagan.

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