Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee began its hearings for President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court. Kagan was appointed by Obama as the U.S. solicitor general in 2009 and held the position until May of this year. She is the first woman to hold the office of solicitor general in the Justice Department. Further, if confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, she will be the fourth woman on the court. Despite being a part of both the Obama and the Clinton administrations, Kagan remains relatively shrouded in mystery in terms of her judicial commitments. Though she has not sat on the bench as a judge, she comes to the hearings as a widely regarded and decorated scholar of law. A recent New York Times piece described Kagan as having produced “distinguished scholarship on the First Amendment, taking clear positions favoring a broad interpretation of free speech.” However, the same article went on to concede that Kagan “arrives for her Senate hearings . . . as one of the most enigmatic nominees for the Supreme Court in recent memory.”

Kagan was born during 1960 in New York, NY on the city’s Upper West Side and was raised – along with her two brothers – by her parents, Gloria Gittelman Kagan and Robert Kagan. Gloria taught fifth and sixth grade while Robert was an attorney. The family attended the then extremely popular Lincoln Square Synagogue. In her youth, Kagan was strong-willed and, so the story goes, clashed with her Orthodox rabbi over the proceedings of her bat mitzvah. She wanted to be like the boys and asked for permission to read from the Torah on Saturday, but instead compromised and read from the Book of Ruth on a Friday. Kagan now considers herself a member of Conservative Judaism – a modern form of Judaism arising out of German intellectual currents during the 19th century.

Elena Kagan is President Obama's nominee to fill the seat of retired Justice John Paul Stevens

Kagan graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in history and then from Oxford University in 1983 with a Masters in Philosophy. She went on to Harvard Law School to receive her J.D. in 1986, became the supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review and was praised as one of their top students. Kagan began what has been an illustrious career in academia in 1991, when she was named an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Beginning in 1995, Kagan served four years under the Clinton administration. She started as President Clinton’s associate counsel, but eventually became the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. At the conclusion of her time with the Clinton administration, Kagan sought to return to academia. In 1999, she was hired by Lawrence H. Summers (former Clinton Treasury secretary and Obama adviser who was then Harvard’s president) as professor of constitutional and administrative law at Harvard Law School.

In 2003, Kagan was the first woman to be named the Dean of Law School by then Harvard University president Summers. While acting as dean, Kagan was known for raising record breaking capital ($476 million), providing a more inviting atmosphere for students (including offering them free coffee), and for expanding the law school’s faculty with splash hires (including major legal scholar Cass Sunstein and the conservative Jack Goldsmith who had worked in George W. Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel). Kagan’s time as dean at Harvard Law School ended when she was named Obama’s solicitor general. The solicitor general is often called the “10th justice,” but the person in the position is not actually a justice in any sense, but rather a lawyer advocating on behalf of the government before the U.S. Supreme Court.

To understand Kagan’s rise within the Obama administration, one would do well to consider the academic connections between she and the President. Kagan joined the staff at the University of Chicago Law school in 1991 and became tenured in 1995; Obama was on staff from 1993 to 2004. Kagan clerked for Abner Mikva; Mikva is now a Chicago lawyer and a close Obama mentor – advising him in each of his last three major campaigns. Additionally, Kagan worked closely with Obama’s chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel while serving under the Clinton administration. Finally, most significant to Obama’s regard for Kagan may be his high regard for Harvard Law faculty in general: Obama is advised by a handful of other Harvard Law professors including (among others) Laurence Tribe, Charles Ogletree, and Dan Meltzer, who is deputy White House counsel.

Yet, despite an academically elite background that might be considered in some ways quite transparent, Kagan’s judicial commitments have often been less than clear. Over the course of the current judicial senate hearings, however, Kagan’s view of the Constitution and how it ought to govern our country will likely become less enigmatic as she will be pressed by senators to answer difficult questions with both clarity and accuracy.

Watch Opening Statement by Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan HERE.