Personal ties bind Obama, Kagan

WASHINGTON — If Elena Kagan is confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice, President Obama will have something that has become increasingly rare for presidents: a personal friend on the court.
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Indeed, when Obama introduced Kagan at the White House as his court nominee, it sounded almost as if he were talking about himself: a former Chicago law professor, Harvard graduate, and White Sox fan who eschewed the lucrative world of corporate law to focus on academia and public service.

Obama brought her into his administration by nominating her to be solicitor general and now, after slightly more than a year in that job, he wants to elevate her to the Supreme Court.

Obama and Kagan first met in the early 1990s in Chicago. While they are not close friends, they have maintained their relationship over the years through common outlooks on politics and law, according to those who know or closely watch them. The arc of their careers sent each to trailblazing heights: Kagan as the first woman to be dean of Harvard Law School and Obama as the first African-American in the White House.

Obama and Kagan “do seem to have similar takes on the court, a moderate-progressive view that the courts can play a useful, progressive role, but it needs to be constrained,’’ said Geoffrey R. Stone, professor and former dean of the University of Chicago Law School, who knew both Obama and Kagan when they taught in Chicago. “My guess is, if they were voting on cases as justices, they probably would be very similar.’’

Former University of Chicago law professor Albert Altschuler called both Obama and Kagan “lawyers’ lawyers.’’ Their approach is, “here’s a legal problem — let’s see if I can solve it,’’ said Altschuler, who taught with Kagan.

Many presidents of the past have nominated friends and associates to the high court. President Lincoln named his former campaign manager to the high court, and Andrew Jackson appointed several friends to the Supreme Court.

Franklin D. Roosevelt picked his Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, William O. Douglas; Harry S. Truman named his attorney general, Tom C. Clark; and Lyndon Johnson picked his friend Abe Fortas, although Fortas’s later nomination to be promoted to chief justice was filibustered by the Senate.

But the practice of nominating friends has been less common in recent years, according to Fred McClure, a Washington-based lawyer who shepherded three Reagan and Bush administration nominees through their confirmations. Then-President George W. Bush in 2005 tried to revive the practice by nominating his friend, White House counsel Harriet Miers — only to have her withdraw amid an uproar about her qualifications.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, dismissing suggestions by some conservatives that the pick of Kagan amounted to cronyism, said he has “a hard time understanding the analogy’’ between Miers and Kagan, citing Kagan’s time as dean at Harvard Law and solicitor general.