Elena Kagan

Elena Kagan has served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court since 2010.

Kagan was born in New York, New York, on April 28, 1960. She received an A.B. in 1981 from Princeton University, an M. Phil. from Oxford University in 1983, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986. While in law school, Kagan was editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Kagan served as a law clerk to Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1986-1987 and as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall during the 1987 term. After working in private practice in Washington, D.C., she was a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School from 1991-1995. In 1993, Senator Joe Biden appointed Kagan as special counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she worked on Ruth Bader Ginsberg's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

From 1995-1999, she was associate counsel to President Clinton and then served as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. She was a professor at Harvard from 1999-2003 then served as dean of Harvard Law School from 2003-2009, the first woman to hold that position.

In 2009, Kagan was confirmed as solicitor general of the United States, the first woman to serve in that position. President Obama nominated her as an associate justice of the Supreme Court on May 10, 2010, and she was sworn in on August 7, 2010.

Sources:

CNN (2020, July 19). Elena Kagan Fast Facts. Retrieved on July 21, 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2013/02/19/us/elena-kagan-fast-facts/index.html.

Supreme Court of the United States. (n.d.). Current members. Retrieved on July 21, 2020, from https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx.