Obama names Harvard Law dean solicitor general
By NEDRA PICKLER
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Published: January 5, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama on Monday chose the dean at his alma mater, Harvard Law School, to represent the United States before the Supreme Court.
Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan would be the first woman confirmed as solicitor general.
Obama announced his choices for three other leading Justice Department jobs. Washington lawyers David Ogden and Tom Perrelli were named as deputy attorney general and associate attorney general. And he picked Indiana University School of Law professor Dawn Johnsen to be assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
Kagan and Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School at the same time during the 1990s. At Harvard, she has won praise for building consensus and for record fundraising.
Kagan has never argued a Supreme Court case but clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced at a Washington law firm. She also worked in the Clinton White House as associate counsel and a domestic policy adviser.
Former President Bill Clinton nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but Republicans stalled the nomination.
The United States is involved in about two-thirds of all cases the Supreme Court decides, according to the Justice Department. The solicitor general's office also determines whether the government should appeal lower court decisions or intervene in appellate court cases.
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