30 November 2011
At the center of the growing furor over the number of justices allegedly too biased to hear the health-care case sits Elena Kagan, the newest justice, on the Court just over a year. While liberal watchdog groups are claiming that Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from the case because of his wife’s affiliation with a tea-party group that explicitly targeted the new health-care law, several conservative groups have raised similar claims about Kagan, contending that she must sit this one out because she worked as President Obama’s solicitor general when the litigation was still pending. Calls for her recusal boiled over in recent weeks when newly disclosed e-mails revealed that as she was solicitor general under Obama, Kagan celebrated with her Justice Department colleague, Laurence Tribe, when the health-care bill was passed, writing, “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.” Her opponents say this confirms that Kagan both strategized about and advised the administration on the law, and also expressed opinions on its constitutional merits, in violation of the recusal rules.
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Her Honor • Opuss № I