Justice Elena Kagan is the most respected of the current and recent liberals on the Supreme Court across the aisle. As is true of Chief Justice John Roberts, even Kagan’s fiercest critics acknowledge that she’s an elite legal talent, an incisive thinker, and a graceful writer. In spite of her thin résumé before the Court, most anyone would be happy to have her as their lawyer to make the best possible case for their position.
The chief conservative critique of Kagan is not that she lacks skill or brains but that she lacks principles: As is generally true of legal liberals and progressives, she has no overarching or constraining theory of the Constitution or statutory interpretation, but tends to just argue her way to whatever result she wants. Even her most famous departure from her own side, in voting to strike down the coercive provisions of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in NFIB v. Sebelius, can be explained as a strategic concession to Roberts to get him on board with upholding the core provisions of the statute.
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