Kagan writings show a sharp wit, acid tongue that won’t be on display at confirmation hearing

Kagan to hide sharp wit at confirmation hearing

WASHINGTON — A Supreme Court nomination hearing is not the place for a would-be justice to display a sharp tongue or a biting wit.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has both, and some of her snarkiness over the years has been directed at the same senators who will be grilling her for a position on the nation’s highest court.

Kagan will be off-script Tuesday on the second day of her confirmation hearings and will probably keep a more civil tongue. But she will probably hear some of her own words thrown back at her.

In a book review, she was highly critical of the way Senate Judiciary Committee members question Supreme Court nominees. For example:

— “If the recent hearings lacked acrimony, they also lacked seriousness and substance.”

— “When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public.”

Kagan also used that article to take shots at several Supreme Court justices, some of whom she’ll be serving with if confirmed. She referred to what she termed the “weakness” of Justice Clarence Thomas’ qualifications for the court and called his testimony “a national laughingstock.”

She’s also been tough on herself.

At her confirmation hearing last year for solicitor general, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania brought up a 1987 memo in which Kagan wrote that religious groups shouldn’t get government financing to provide social services because they would most likely use it to proselytize.

The Supreme Court later ruled the other way, and Kagan told Specter she had reviewed her own words and thought, “That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”