The XX Factor: What women really think.

What It Takes To Be Solicitor General

I am breaking into the sugar daddy thread at my peril, I realize. But for a moment, another topic: Elena Kagan, Obama's choice for solicitor general. Dahlia writes, correctly, of the kvelling for Kagan--law professors have been calling me to volunteer their praise for her management of Harvard law school and her knowledge of constitutional law. But there's also an undercurrent of surprise about this choice. Kagan isn't a member of the Supreme Court bar. She has never argued a case before the high court; and while I don't know she hasn't definitively, I haven't heard of her arguing cases before other courts, either. Does this matter for the SG's job? Or is it like Leon Panetta for the CIA--a matter of being differently experienced, but not necessarily less qualified?

Linc Caplan, my friend and mentor, and everyone's wise man about the SG's office, since he wrote the book on it, isn't worried about Kagan's lack of record as an oral advocate. He says that while appearing before the court is the most visible and glamorous part of the job, that the "main role of the SG is to shape the legal positions of the U.S. government in the federal courts." For that, he says, Kagan’s experience at Harvard and before that as a lawyer ("a law clerk at the Court; a couple of years at Williams & Connolly; a few years at a high level in the White House") is all on point. That makes sense to me. Still, there will be an extra shiver of anticipation about Kagan's first argument as the first woman SG.