High court nominee already drawing fire from left and right

The question of whether U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will move the court to the right or the left continued to be among the main points of contention among legal scholars Monday. Kagan, currently the first woman to serve as U.S. solicitor general, would join two other women on the high court. She would also be the third Jewish justice, after Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer. Since long before President Barack Obama nominated her to the highest court in the country, one school of observers has been saying that Kagan has the intellectual firepower to persuade Justice Anthony Kennedy to join the "liberal" wing of the court on more occasions, while another group believes that, based on her record, her appointment is more likely to move the court to the right. At one end of this spectrum of opinion stand the views of Prof. Frances Boyle, the left-of-center firebrand legal scholar from the University of Illinois Law School. Boyle told IPS, "As dean of the Harvard Law School, Kagan hired [George W.] Bush's outgoing director of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, as a law professor. Goldsmith is regarded by myself and many others in the field as a war criminal."