Live Blogging the Kagan Confirmation

Robert Alt / June 29, 2010

Deputy Director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation Robert Alt is scheduled to testify as a minority witness this Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the nomination of Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Throughout the hearings, he and his colleagues will be providing real-time updates here at The Foundry. This post will remain at the top of the page throughout. Please look below for other fresh perspectives on the day’s news and issues:

6:20 PM – Kagan as Solicitor General Would Have Banned Books and Pamphlets Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) followed the liberal tactic of excoriating the current Supreme Court in order to divert attention from Kagan’s record.  He tried to get Kagan to agree that the Court’s throwing out a ban on independent political expenditures by unions and corporations on First Amendment grounds is “highly unusual, if not unprecedented.”

What was in fact highly unusual was Elena Kagan and her deputy’s arguments before the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case when she was Solicitor General.  They chillingly claimed that the government could ban books and pamphlets.

After some back and forth, Deputy Attorney General Stewart replied that the government theoretically could ban books under the law if their publication used corporate funds.  The justices indicated their astonishment that the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States would say that the government could ban a book, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg then asked Kagan questions regarding the same issue.  Kagan admitted that the law in question applied to books – but she suggested that was okay because the Federal Election Commission had never exercised its authority under the law to ban books. (more…)