Kagan Praised at HLS Panel

Former Dean of the Law School Elena Kagan—fresh from her first appearance before the Supreme Court—appeared before a rapturous crowd at the Law School on Friday where she described her recent experiences in Washington and was lauded by her HLS colleagues.

Kagan, the current solicitor general, appeared on a panel with her successor as Dean, Martha L. Minow; Professor Charles Fried, a former Solicitor General under President Reagan; and Professor John F. Manning ’82, who worked in the solicitor general’s office in the early 1990s.

Kagan’s Law School colleagues all praised her work and sought to use her government service as an example for HLS students about to enter the work-force.

Kagan’s recent Supreme Court appearance—a benchmark for success for the nation’s top lawyers—was front and center in the panel discussion.

Fried, himself a veteran of the Supreme Court, commended Kagan for her ability to give and take in argument and acknowledge difficulty in argument before the nation’s top legal minds.

“Are you saying I was confused?” Kagan jokingly interjected.

Kagan came to the Law School to describe her new position—calling it depoliticized and emphasizing the importance of trust between the solicitor general’s office and the Supreme Court.

Though Friday’s panel sought to describe the merits and possibilities of government service, the audience—a packed crowd that trailed out the door and consisted mostly of students—hoped for an inside look at an administration with close personal and ideological ties with the North Yard.

But Kagan revealed that she has no daily working relationship with President Obama and instead interacts on a more regular basis with the Attorney General.

Still, Kagan’s ascension to one of the nation’s most prestigious legal positions—one that is often considered a stepping stone to a position on the Supreme Court—represents a return to power for HLS, whose largely liberal faculty had retreated from government during the Bush administration.

One audience member asked Kagan what it was like to battle with Justice Antonin Scalia, referring to a tense moment during an argument before the Court on Wednesday.

“Well, uh, he was wrong,” she said in the rather forced tone of a once free-spoken academic.

—Staff writer Elias J. Groll can be reached at egroll@fas.harvard.edu.