I don’t know about you, but I am excited about another woman possibly sitting on the Supreme Court!  I have been crazy busy and unable to watch the hearing, but I have been trying to read what is going on and found some of the opening comments made last week by Senator Klobuchar quite informative.

One such comment was “Solicitor General Kagan, there are always a lot of critics on the sidelines, but you have actually been in the arena . . . as a manager, as a teacher, as an advisor, as a consensus-builder and as a lawyer.  In every job you’ve had, you’ve worked very hard and done very well.  That is why you are before us today, being considered – in the words of Teddy Roosevelt – for this “high achievement.” ”

She further went on to say “It strikes me that it takes a pretty extraordinary person who, after working in the Clinton Administration, can still get a standing ovation from the Federalist Society… who inspires a group of 600 law school students to show up for a rally wearing “I love Elena” t-shirts… who is widely credited with calming the factionalism that had previously roiled your law school.  In several different jobs now, you have successfully managed lawyers, and worse yet, law professors – a group that can certainly be described as “fearless in the face of supervision”! In sum, you’ve had a lot of practical experience reaching out to people who hold very different beliefs, and that’s increasingly important on a very divided Supreme Court.  That must be, by the way, why you have all the previous Solicitors General from the past 25 years – under both Democratic and Republican administrations – supporting you for this job.  In the course of more than two centuries, 111 justices have served on the Supreme Court.  Only three have been women.   If you are confirmed, you will be the fourth, and for the first time in its history, three women would take their places on the bench when arguments are heard in the fall.”

I think it’s time we had someone on the bench who thinks about the consequences of how the decisions that are made affect the “real people” and their lives.  There are so many decisions handed down that just make no sense to many of us and have consequences on people’s lives that are not always for the better.  Having someone with the ability to state what those impacts could or would be, sitting on the bench might make a big difference.  It sure couldn’t hurt!

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