the supreme court plays a unique and central role in the life of our nation. those who sit as justices have extraordinary power over some of the most important and basic aspects of the lives of american citizens. the nine men and women have enormous responsibilities. those of us on this committee have a significant responsibility as well. ms. kagan i hope you will be forth coming in your answers to have an open and honest discussion of answers the country deserves. in 2005 when we began our confirmation hearings for chief justice roberts the court had not seen a new member for 11 years, now we are seeing the fourth nomination in five years. we begin a hearing that could result in three women sitting on the court at one time. came a long time from the days justice ginsberg was turned down
like everyone else, i would like to acknowledge the passing of senator byrd who was a worthy ally and a very good component when it came to the senate. my association with senator byrd during the game of gang of 14, of our. michelle bernard, joining us from the independent women s forum. michelle, this nomination here has gotten extremely political already. very, very political and the thing that s very interesting listening to the republican members who spoke this morning in their opening statement, one would think that if you re a republican and the issues you re typically concerned with looked at some of the former statements that ms. kagan has made in the past and are very tepid, very lukewarm and hasn t really endorsed her yet.
relatively thin body of work raise substantive concerns such as federalism, freech speech, national security and others. to take a last example, i m deeply troubled as solicitor general to urge the supreme court to review and strike down an arizona law designed to prevent employers from hiring illegal aliens. the ninth circuit unanimously upheld the law. federal immigration laws allows states to sanction businesses. there are legitimate questions whether the brief authorized by ms. kagan flies in the face of the plain language of the law and urges the supreme court to strike these enforcement provisions down and motivated by political influence in the white house and the department of justice. without the urging of her office the court would not have granted cert in the case. there is ample reasons to
if that is too results oriented, so be it. ms. kagan outlined that approach she argued necessary for supreme court confirmation hearings to be more than acuity and farce when she was a tenured law professor after working for this committee on a supreme court confirmation. i believe you will hear a lot about your remarks and law review article in the past. she was not a student writing a blog about some hyperthreat cal topic she knew nothing about. i m confident senators will give ms. kagan many opportunities to provide the insight she has argued the senate properly to make a decision on hr confirmation. this is a critical decision. our decision will affect liberty itself. george washington said this in his federal address the basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and
to advance certain classes of litigants. she wrote there is no good reason to place an exclusionary role before this court that will doubtlessly do something horrible with it. she wrote, i see no reason to let the cot get a crack at this question. she was more explicit after the government s handwritten note saying i continue to believe that the facts did not support the arrest but i cannot see anything good coming out of review of this case by this court. ms. kagan explains these recommendations as primarily channeling justice marshall. i see no evidence in addition to my general concern whether ms. kagan could decide cases without bias, a surprising number of things in her