Harvard Law School

Elena Kagan was sworn in as the 112th justice of the Supreme Court on Saturday, opening the first era in U.S. history with three women serving on the nation's premier judicial bench. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. administered the oath at the Supreme Court just two days after the Senate's 63-37 vote Thursday to confirm her nomination and one day after President Obama hosted a White House reception in Kagan's honor. She is not expected to dramatically change the ideological balance of the court because she replaces retired Justice John Paul Stevens, a fellow liberal jurist.

This summer, as Elena Kagan quietly moved toward confirmation to the Supreme Court, three major legal disputes took shape that could define her early years. The justices soon will be called upon to decide whether states like Arizona can enforce immigration laws, whether same-sex couples have a right to marry and whether Americans can be required to buy health insurance. Kagan's record strongly suggests she will vote in favor of federal regulation of immigration and health insurance and vote to oppose discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Ideally, Senate confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court nominee serve two purposes: to test the potential justice's grasp of the law and to elicit her views about the Constitution and the role of the court. This week's hearings for Solicitor General Elena Kagan accomplished the first objective but not the second. Kagan faithfully followed the playbook used to advantage by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. at his hearings five years ago: Demonstrate an encyclopedic knowledge of Supreme Court decisions, commit yourself to judicial modesty and a respect for precedent, and elegantly evade questions that might reveal your own views about constitutional issues.

Supporters and critics of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan argued their case before the Senate Judiciary Committee late Thursday, but one of her most formidable opponents weighed in earlier in the day. The National Rifle Assn., Washington's powerful gun lobby, came out against her confirmation, saying Kagan "has repeatedly demonstrated a clear hostility to the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution." As a domestic policy advisor for President Clinton in the 1990s, Kagan was part of an administration that battled the NRA on issues such as assault weapons, the importation of semiautomatic rifles, trigger locks and gun show sales.

On her first day fielding questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on Tuesday was accused of shading the truth about her role in a controversy over military recruiters at Harvard University. "The overall picture that she portrayed of the situation seems to me to be disconnected to the reality," Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the panel, said after an extended spat with Kagan. "I believe that's a serious matter." Sessions also said that she was not "rigorously accurate" and that he expected "intellectual honesty" from prospective justices.

After more than three hours, Elena Kagan, the solicitor general of the United States, got her chance to speak directly to the panel of senators who will weigh her nomination to be the next Supreme Court justice and promised to do her best and work hard while keeping her mind open to deal with contentious issues. Kagan avoided taking any specific positions Monday on the contentious social issues on which she will likely rule, if confirmed. Nominated to become the 112th justice on the Supreme Court, she took a modest stand while promising to work impartially for justice for all. "I will make no pledges this week other than this one -- that if confirmed, I will remember and abide by all these lessons," she told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Seeking to blunt an impending Republican attack on her fitness for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan said Monday that if confirmed, she would consider every case "impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle and in accordance to the law." Kagan, tapped for the high court by President Obama in May, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on the first day of her confirmation hearing that as a justice she would listen to arguments from all sides "across every apparent political or ideological divide."

Georgetown University law professor Martin D. Ginsburg, the husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, died Sunday of cancer, the Supreme Court announced. He was 78. Though he was among the nation's foremost experts on tax law, Ginsburg relished his role as the outgoing half of one of Washington's prominent couples. Marty and Ruth Ginsburg were married for 56 years, and friends often described theirs as a successful marriage of two seemingly quite different individuals.

The first four decades of Elena Kagan's life had been a chain of success, from her student days at Princeton, Oxford and Harvard to her turns as Supreme Court clerk, law school professor and presidential advisor. Then, on the brink of her 40th birthday, came a setback. As she prepared to leave the Clinton White House in 1999, she wanted to return to teaching law at the University of Chicago, where she had won tenure four years earlier. But since she had given up the tenured spot by staying in Washington so long, she needed a faculty vote to approve her return.