• Sorry, guys, but being a law dean who treated conservative scholars with cordiality and fairness doesn’t mean you’ll either 1) be anything but a predictably liberal judge yourself, or 2) show any particular unusual persuasiveness with conservative colleagues on the bench. Jim Copland invites us to consider the example of Guido Calabresi;
• As part of their job duties, persons who hold the office of Solicitor General sometimes sign their name to arguments they’d reject out of hand if hearing the case as a judge. We’d better hope this is the case with Kagan’s defense of the federal law on depictions of animal cruelty, in which she advanced what Chief Justice Roberts rightly called the “startling and dangerous” position that the protections of the First Amendment should be subject to case-by-case cost-benefit balancing. Jacob Sullum explains.
• Mark Moller contributes some perspective worth considering on the military-recruitment issue. More: Roger Pilon.
• Not my view alone: “We are seeing what government by the faculty lounge looks like,” writes Michael Barone. More: David Wagner. “My experience with Prof. Kagan” accounts: Elie Mystal, Above the Law, and Sasha Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy.
• “Libertarians respond to the nomination” [Damon Root, Reason “Hit and Run”]. Views of Miguel Estrada and Stuart Taylor, Jr. [Moller, Cato] While in the Clinton administration, she took “pro-plaintiff” stances on liability reform [Mark Hofmann, Business Insurance quoting Victor Schwartz, via Ted at Point of Law] More from Jim Copland [City Journal] She helped beef up Harvard’s Berkman Center on intellectual property; does this mean she’s sympathetic to “fair use” concerns? [Cavanaugh, Reason “Hit and Run”]

Filed under: Elena Kagan