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Jewish Supreme Court Justice
Elena Kagan Speaks at Penn
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
I n America today, people are losing
faith in democratic institutions and
ending relationships over politi-
cal diff erences. A September Gallup
poll found Supreme Court “trust” and
“approval” to be at an all-time low.

An October New York Times/Sienna
College poll uncovered that almost a
fi ft h of Americans believed “political
disagreements had hurt relationships
with friends or family.”
Yet despite those fi ndings, United
States Supreme Court Associate Justice
Elena Kagan appeared before a group
of University of Pennsylvania students
on Oct. 21. Offi cially, the Jewish justice
was sitting down for a conversation
with new Penn President Elizabeth
Magill during the latter’s inaugural
festivities. But once she got through the Ivy
League red meat about serving as solic-
itor general, as dean of Harvard Law
School and now as a Supreme Court
justice, and about working alongside
former Presidents Bill Clinton and
Barack Obama, among others, she got
to the heart of the conversation.

Kagan, one of the leaders of America,
told its future leaders how Democratic
us.” Th e judge believes that the law
develops best when it does so “slowly,
and incrementally, by the work of many
judges over time.” She also thinks that
“it’s a kind of hubris to say, 'Well just
throw that all out because we think we
know better.'”
Th e assembled students, professors
and Penn staff members clapped again.

According to Kagan, this deliberate
pace prevents the court from “becom-
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From left: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan speaks with
new University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill.

institutions could still work. And for
good measure, she explained how a
liberal from New York City like her-
self could build a friendship with a
conservative who went hunting on the
weekends in Antonin Scalia, the for-
mer Supreme Court justice who died
in 2016.

“Law should be stable,” Kagan said.

“People depend on law.”
Th e audience of about 900 people
in the Irvine Auditorium clapped
and drowned out the rest of Kagan’s
answer. But then the justice continued
explaining her theory about how the
legal system should work.

As Kagan said, “We think we know
everything, but it turns out people have
been doing law for a long time before
ing politicized.” Th e justice explained
that it’s a human instinct to look at an
old doctrine, call it counterintuitive
and say, “Why shouldn’t I just get rid
of it?”
But if judges come onto a court and
say they're overthrowing the apparatus
and the legal rules, “it starts not to look
like law anymore,” Kagan said. Such an
approach can degenerate into “tit for
tat,” as the justice described it.

“Maybe some other justices will come
on and they’ll do the same thing,” she
said. “Th ere are all these jolts to the sys-
tem, and it begins to look not like a court,
and more like a political institution.”
“Courts should be courts. Courts
should act like courts,” Kagan con-
cluded. Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania
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