Law school deans from across country endorse Kagan, Harvard’s onetime dean, for Supreme Court

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Fellow law school deans embrace Kagan for court

WASHINGTON — A broad group of legal academics is endorsing Elena Kagan Tuesday for the Supreme Court.

Sixty-nine law school deans from around the country wrote to the chairman and top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee in praise of Kagan, herself a former Harvard Law School dean. One conservative who left his name off the letter — Dean Joseph Kearney of the Marquette University Law School — is scheduled to join signatories on a conference call Tuesday afternoon to announce he, too, backs President Barack Obama’s choice to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Kearney clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s conservative icon.

The letter calls Kagan “superbly qualified,” saying she has first-rate legal skills, a respected body of work on constitutional law, enormous intelligence, and a flair for forging coalitions.

Kagan “is known to us as a person of unimpeachable integrity,” the letter concludes. “She will inspire those around her to pursue law and justice in a way that makes us proud.”

It’s signed by Stanford Law School Dean Larry D. Kramer on behalf of law deans from a wide-ranging assortment of schools around the country, from the Ivy League to state schools, and large well-known institutions to small, obscure ones.

The Judiciary panel is set to begin hearings on Kagan’s nomination on June 28.

The White House has gone out of its way to highlight conservative support for Kagan. It featured a conservative former student of Kagan’s on a conference call last month to showcase Harvard law graduates’ positive views of their one-time dean.

Similarly, Kearney is scheduled to join two liberal deans, Martha Minow of Harvard and Evan H. Caminker of the University of Michigan Law School, on Tuesday’s call.

A handful of other conservatives have written to the Judiciary panel endorsing Kagan, including Miguel Estrada, a failed federal appeals court nominee chosen by former President George W. Bush.

Brian Fitzpatrick, another former Scalia clerk and one-time Republican aide who now teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School, also wrote to the Judiciary panel last week endorsing Kagan.

Fitzpatrick, who was one of Kagan’s law students at Harvard, called her “a person of utmost integrity, extraordinary legal talent, and relentless generosity,” and said he could “imagine few people who will better serve the American people as a justice.”