President's Supreme Court Pick & Military Connection

There's not too much to comment on with President Obama's Supreme Court nominee when you're a military affairs blog. However, there is a tie-in. Elena Kagan helped kick military recruiters off of Harvard’s campus in a decision that was overturned 9-0 by the same Supreme Court to which she's been nominated.

President Obama’s latest choice for the Supreme Court, has held a number of high-profile jobs over the years, but she has left a relatively thin paper trail, with one major exception. As the dean of Harvard’s law school, Kagan fought to bar military recruiters from the university’s campus. Her reasoning? Even with two wars in progress, she contended, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should disqualify the US military from having any association with the school. “I abhor the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy,” she said, describing it as a “moral injustice of the first order.”

Critics say Kagan’s legal arguments on the matter are so preposterous that they raise doubts about her ability to serve on the bench. And indeed when the Supreme Court later rejected her position on military recruiting at Harvard, it did so unanimously.

Beginning in 2004, Kagan changed established Harvard policy and barred recruiters from the school’s career center. The Pentagon responded by invoking the Solomon Amendment, a 1994 law that explicitly requires universities that receive federal funding to allow military representatives at least as much access to campus as any other group. With Harvard’s $400 million in annual grants on the line, Kagan was forced to surrender.

By: Brant