WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is unlikely to face a GOP filibuster but should expect difficult questions from lawmakers who will decide whether she deserves the lifetime appointment despite having no judicial experience, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican said Sunday.
“The filibuster should be relegated to the extreme circumstances, and I don’t think Elena Kagan represents that,” said Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
GOP senators are placing great weight on her testimony in determining the fate of President Barack Obama’s second nominee for the high court. At issue is her lack of a judicial paper trail; she has never been a judge.
Kagan is now the U.S. solicitor general, the top government lawyer who argues the administration’s cases before the Supreme Court, and was dean of Harvard Law School.
Republicans want to know “whether she will lay her political beliefs aside when she’s deciding cases and decide those cases strictly based upon the facts and the law of the case,” Kyl said. “That may be a little difficult in her case because she’s never had to do that before as a judge, and so it’s more difficult to know whether she is actually able to set her views aside. But that will be the primary issue.”
Kyl also said he wants answers on her thoughts about the “enemy combatant” designation used for terrorism suspects. The Senate’s Republican leader, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, said he wants to know about Kagan’s thoughts on campaign finance and free speech.
Leahy said he would meet this week with Sessions to decide when to begin the hearings for Kagan. Leahy noted that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sonia Sotomayor both were nominated in the spring and confirmed long before October. “If we could follow a schedule roughly like that, we’ll be done this summer,” he said.
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