Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk in 1987 that she was “not sympathetic” toward a man who contended that his constitutional rights were violated when he was convicted for carrying an unlicensed pistol.
Kagan, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the high court this week, made the comment to Justice Thurgood Marshall, urging him in a one-paragraph memo to vote against hearing the District of Columbia man’s appeal.
...
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said the position taken in the memo to Marshall reflected the prevailing view of the law at the time.
Reflecting Marshall
During her confirmation hearing to be solicitor general, the federal government’s top Supreme Court advocate, Kagan said she was trying to reflect Marshall’s views when she evaluated so-called petitions for certiorari, or cert petitions. She called herself a “27-year-old pipsqueak” working for a “90- year-old giant in the law.”Source:
http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-12/kagan-said-she-was-not-sympathetic-toward-gun-rights-claim-in-1987-memo.html?xid=huffbloombergI wouldn't read too much into this. She was a "pipsqueak" among giants and even the scholars who led out in correcting Second Amendment legal history (and in modern criminological discoveries) would probably have agreed with her at the time.
I love the way the administration is running away from the quote. I predicted that America would give our president a lesson in Second Amendment politics; it appears he has learned well. He even distances himself from the idea that a man shouldn't be able to carry arms in DC.
Well done, Mr. President!
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