Kagan and carp: High court nominee argued against locks closure
Does the name Elena Kagan ring a bell? For those following the legal wranglings of the Asian carp invasion, it should. Kagan, as President Barack Obama’s Solicitor General, argued against closing the Chicago locks to prevent the invasive carp from entering Lake Michigan.
She wrote that although allowing the carp to enter the Great Lakes would produce “grave and irreparable harm,” it was only “speculative” that the harm would occur “imminently.”
Now that Kagan has been nominated to the high court, environmental journalists across the spectrum are trying to fathom her stances but not finding much. According to Green Energy reporter, she is seen as “a supporter of environmental law and as a lawyer who takes climate change seriously.”
Since Kagan has never served as a judge, you can’t tell her philosophy from her decisions. But Grist reports that one indicator of her leanings is her six-year stint as dean of Harvard Law School, from 2003 to 2009, where she helped found the Environmental Law Program.
“Kagan lured the highly regarded environmental policy and regulation scholar Jody Freeman from UCLA to lead the program, one of the most prominent hires of her Harvard tenure. Kagan also launched an Environmental Law and Policy Clinic that puts students to work on current cases,” reports Grist.
Sounds like just another lawyer.
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For a bit more on Elena Kagan (and we don’t have much), see my Great Lakes Law blog post:
http://www.greatlakeslaw.org/blog/2010/05/elena-kagan-nominated-to-supreme-court.html
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This article needs to be re-checked for typos…!
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“Kagan lured the highly regarded environmental policy and regulation scholar Jody Freeman from UCLA to lead the program, one of the most prominent hires of her Harvard tenure. Kagan also launched an Environmental Law and Policy Clinic that puts students to work on current cases.”
So she managed to sweeten the salary of an academic lawyer and convince him to move across the country to make her program look better? Big flipping deal. This woman was not picked for her experience, but the effect her card will have when it is added to Obama’s deck.
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