Kagan campaigns for top court

May 18, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Reaching out to potential converts, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is dropping carefully calculated hints about her judicial approach on issues ranging from political speech to national security.

Kagan, who stepped aside from her post as solicitor general Monday, isn’t revealing much as she plods through a painstaking series of Capitol Hill meetings with the senators whose backing she needs for confirmation. But the 50-year old former law-school dean — who has never been a judge — has weighed in cautiously on several issues as she strives to paint a fuller picture of what kind of a justice she might be.

Take, for example, her closed-door exchange last week with Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who voted against Kagan’s confirmation as the government’s top lawyer last year on the grounds she wouldn’t talk about her legal views.

Kagan made clear that she disagreed with a recent Supreme Court ruling that has provoked intense partisan debate, according to Specter. She criticized the court’s January ruling upholding the First Amendment rights of corporations and labor unions to spend money on campaign ads, thus enhancing their ability to influence federal elections.

“She said she thought the court was not sufficiently deferential to Congress,” Specter said.

In commenting on a case, Citizens United vs. FEC, Kagan was breaking with tradition. Judicial nominees, particularly for the high court, rarely if ever weigh in on a ruling — much less a recent, highly controversial one — on the grounds that it could come before them in the future.

But her stated gripe had little to do with the politically charged debate over the ruling, which President Barack Obama has assailed as giving corporations power to warp elections and which Republicans have praised. Instead, Kagan couched her criticism in terms of the principle that the Supreme Court should defer to Congress.

That was a key element of her defense when she argued the case unsuccessfully as solicitor general last year.

Kagan’s recent comment was sure to appeal to Democrats and middle-of-the-road Republicans who oppose the ruling but might also appeal to conservatives who favor judicial restraint.