Elena Kagan was just confirmed to the Supreme Court by a vote of 63 to 37, mostly along party lines. No one ever seemed to get really enthusiastic about her or really enthusiastic against her. Maybe that’s a good thing for the body politic; a toning down of the hyperventilation about judges as political actors would be a welcome trend but one which I do not foresee catching on.
Kagan herself shows signs of being a very pro-government Justice, one who will use her votes to uphold the exercise of power by the government, and especially the Federal government. As I whined recently, there seems to be little organized or principled political resistance to the idea of the government’s accretion of power over time, perhaps this is simply another milepost along that trend.
Or perhaps Justice Kagan will surprise me. I’m not holding my breath, though.
From a libertarian perspective, this is an unmitigated disaster.