That sounds a little redundant, Bt. Hard to scrutinize what's non-existant, such as a judicial record. it would have to be other areas of her "resume'"
Sure her writings and teachings are fair targets.
Think we'll get a
gander at this?
Will the Senate see Kagan's long paper trail?By: Byron York "We're talking about tens of thousands of pages," says Susan Cooper, spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration. "It's a massive job."
Cooper is discussing the work of processing papers from Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's two years, 1995 and 1996, in the Clinton White House Counsel's Office. During that time, Kagan, like any overworked staff lawyer, handled a wide variety of issues and
wrote or contributed to thousands of memos, e-mails and other documents. Those papers, boxes and boxes of them, are at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, under the supervision of the archives.
You've probably heard a lot of talk about Kagan not having a paper trail. It's not true. In fact, she has a long paper trail.
The only question is whether the senators who vote on her confirmation will be allowed to see it.
There have already been some stories -- articles like "Memos Reveal Elena Kagan's Centrist Side" -- based on documents from Kagan's White House service, but those are from her time, 1997 to 1999, on the White House Domestic Policy Council. Cooper says those papers have already been processed by government archivists and many, although not necessarily all, of them have been posted on the Internet.
But what Cooper calls the "bulk of the [Kagan-related] records that we have" come from Kagan's time in the counsel's office. They have not yet been processed and are not yet open. And, of course, they are likely to cover issues that would be useful to senators seeking to learn more about Kagan's legal thinking.
So the question is: Will senators get to see them? If history is any guide, the answer is yes.
In 2005, when John Roberts was nominated for the Supreme Court, minority Democrats wanted to see papers Roberts had written while serving in the Reagan White House Counsel's Office in the mid-1980s. President George W. Bush complied, and the Senate Judiciary Committee was given more than 50,000 pages of material detailing Roberts' positions on issues like civil rights, the separation of powers, school prayer and other topics.
Although Bush declined to produce everything Roberts wrote while at the Justice Department in another job, the White House papers gave the Senate unique insights into Roberts' legal thinking. The public learned a lot, too, since the papers were also the source for hundreds of press accounts describing Roberts' writing style and personality.
Now, we have another Supreme Court nominee who spent time in the counsel's office.
"There is now a precedent that a White House lawyer's materials will be produced," says Bradford Berenson, an associate counsel in the Bush White House.
"I think it will be very difficult for the Obama administration, given everything they've said about transparency and openness, to withhold these documents."That applies even to cases in which the Clinton White House claimed executive privilege. For example, in 1996, Kagan was involved in a controversy in which the Clinton administration was accused of siding with a group of radical environmentalists locked in a standoff with federal agents in Oregon. Officials at the U.S. Forest Service suspected that a staffer at the White House Council on Environmental Quality tipped off the protesters about a coming federal crackdown.
The situation drew the attention of Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources, who found that Kagan, in the White House Counsel's Office, did little, if anything, to find or punish the leaker, even though that person had revealed confidential information that potentially endangered the lives of Forest Service agents. GOP investigators asked for Kagan's notes on the matter at the time, but the White House refused, claiming executive privilege.
It's possible Senate Republicans will want to see those documents today. Given the Roberts precedent, there seems
no reason for the papers to remain secret.
It's not yet clear whether there will be a battle over White House papers. Republican Senate Judiciary Committee sources say it's too early to know what documents GOP senators will want to see, and it's also too early to know how the White House will respond to Senate demands.
But remember:
Elena Kagan has a very long paper trail. The Senate will need to see a lot of it before she is elevated to the nation's highest court.
