Updated August 05, 2010
Elena Kagan was born in New York City on April 28, 1960. On August 5, 2010, Kagan was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 112th Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Replacing retired Justice John Paul Stevens, Kagan is just the fourth woman to serve on the Supreme Court.Legal Experience
When nominated to the Supreme Court on May 26, 2009 by President Barak Obama, Kagan was serving as Solicitor General of the United States. In this capacity, Kagan supervised and conducted litigation involving the United States Government in the Supreme Court. Prior to her service as Solicitor General, Kagan was the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law and the 11th Dean of Harvard Law School. From 1995 to 1999, Kagan served in the White House, first as Associate Counsel to the President (1995-96) and then as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council (1997-99). Kagan clerked for Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1986 to 1987. The next year, she clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. She worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly from 1989 to 1991.
Education
Kagan received her bachelor's degree, summa cum laude, from Princeton in 1981. She attended Worcester College, Oxford, as Princeton's Daniel M. Sachs Graduating Fellow, and received a Master of Philosophy in 1983. She then attended Harvard Law School, where she was supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated magna cum laude in 1986.
Senate Confirmation
Elena Kagan was confirmed by the Senate as the 112th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on August 5, 2010, by a vote of 63-37.
