Elena Kagan

In her adolescence, Elena Kagan disagreed with her Orthodox rabbi over aspects of her ‘bat mitzvah’ (the Jewish coming of age ritual for girls). She wanted her ritual to be as important as the ritual for boys, ‘bar mitzvah’. In the present day, she identifies with Conservative Judaism. Justice Kagan has remained unmarried.

Elena Kagan was born on 28 April 1960, in New York City, in a middle-class Jewish family. Her father, Robert, was an attorney while her mother, Gloria was a teacher. She was the middle born of three children; her two brothers grew up to become public school teachers.

Inspired by her educator mother, she attended the Hunter College High School graduating in 1977. She also took an early interest in law, inspired by her father’s profession.

After high school, she attended Princeton University where in 1981 she earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in history. She also served as the editor of the award winning student newspaper, ‘The Daily Princetonian’.

At Princeton, she received the Daniel M. Sachs Graduating Fellow Scholarship, one of the highest student awards bestowed by the university, which enabled her to attend Worcester College, Oxford.

She earned a Master of Philosophy at Oxford in 1983 before joining Harvard Law School. She became supervising editor of the ‘Harvard Law Review’ and in 1986, received the Juris Doctor, magna cum laude degree.

After law school, Elena Kagan began her career as a law clerk for Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in 1987. Thereafter, she worked for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. She later joined a private law firm at Washington, D.C., Williams & Connolly as an associate.

In 1991, she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School as an assistant professor and in 1995, became a tenured professor of law.

While working at Chicago University, she published a law review article on the regulation of the ‘First Amendment hate speech’. She also published a review of a book by Stephen L. Carter, discussing the judicial confirmation process.

In 1995, she left Chicago Law School to work as an Associate Counsel for the U.S. President Bill Clinton. She spent the next four years at the White House during which she was promoted several times. From 1997–1999, she worked as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and then, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Before leaving office, Clinton nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in place of James L. Buckley. However, the Senate Judiciary Committee negated her nomination and she returned to the academic world in 1999.

In 2015, Elena Kagan played an instrumental role in two landmark Supreme Court rulings. First, she was one of the six justices to defend a critical component of the 2010 Affordable Care Act in King v. Burwell. The majority ruling made the Affordable Care Act difficult to undo.

Secondly, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states in its historic decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, with Kagan joining the majority ruling.