by Chris Brown, www.politicalbase.com

With March serving as National Women’s History Month, it’s quite befitting to acknowledge the recent success for President Obama and Elena Kagan, the next U.S. Solicitor General:

Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School, was confirmed Thursday by the Senate as the nation’s first female solicitor general, to represent the Obama administration before the Supreme Court.

Kagan’s appointment is indeed unprecedented considering that no woman has ever served as U.S. Solicitor General since the creation of the Office of the Solicitor General, which was founded in 1870.

The original Statutory Authorization Act of June 22, 1870, states, “There shall be in the Department of Justice an officer learned in the law, to assist the Attorney General in the performance of his duties to be called the Solicitor General.” The Office of the Solicitor General is tasked to conduct all litigation on behalf of the United States in the Supreme Court, and to supervise the handling of litigation in the federal appellate courts. The general functions of the Office can be found at 28 CFR 0.20.

But her Senate confirmation on Thursday was not absent of political gamesmanship by Republican senators in the U.S. Congress:

The vote was 61 to 31.

Some Republican opponents questioned her legal views and experience, as Kagan has never argued a Supreme Court case. But she was a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and worked in the Clinton White House as an associate counsel and policy adviser. All former solicitor generals since 1985, both Democrats and Republicans, endorsed her nomination, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told colleagues yesterday.

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