Kagan Defends Public’s Right to Criticize US Supreme Court (1)

US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan defended the right of people to criticize the court’s decisions and whether the justices are doing their jobs.

While speaking Saturday at an event for Princeton University alumni, Kagan said the public’s entitled to express views about whether the court “is doing its job properly, no matter how hard we’re working and seriously we’re taking things.”

“In the end, the results matter, people are absolutely entitled to make judgments about the court based on the results that the court is reaching and the reasons that the court is giving for those results,” she said.

The liberal justice wasn’t asked to comment on escalating tensions between the judiciary and the Trump administration and his allies over lower court rulings, and she steered clear of any mention of them. The subject of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy also didn’t come up in the question-and-answer session with Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber.

But her remarks come with Supreme Court public approval ratings still dragging and partisan tensions still flaring over blockbuster decisions on hot button topics like guns, abortion, affirmative action, and one last year over presidential immunity involving President Donald Trump.

The justices also are expected start seeing more appeals relating to Trump’s executive orders and other actions that are generating criticism from one side or the other.

Trump has been testing legal guardrails on presidential power, inviting judges to stop him from asserting bolder authority on birthright citizenship, federal spending, and efforts to slash the federal workforce.

No Dealing

During the discussion about how the justices reach compromises as the court handles difficult issues, Kagan said “horse trading” isn’t involved in the process.

“Do we bargain? do we compromise? No and yes. Here’s one thing I’ve never seen on the court. I’ve never seen horse trading of the kinds that might go on in Congress and might appropriately go on in Congress,” Kagan said.

“I’ve never seen a kind of—you take this, I’ll take that. Across cases, it never happens—if I say, ‘I’ll vote with you on case X, if you vote with me on case Y.’ Never seen that.”

Kagan later said that court finds ways to reach “principled compromises” in the service of getting more consensus and reaching common ground on issues. This was particularly important while the court operated with only eight justices following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Princeton Award

Her remarks come as Princeton awarded her its Woodrow Wilson award for alumni “whose career embodies the call to duty in President Woodrow Wilson’s 1896 speech, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.”

Kagan, who served as US Solicitor General under the Obama administration before she was nominated to the bench in 2010, earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Princeton in 1981.

She isn’t the only alumni on the court. Justices Samuel Alito earned an undergraduate degree in 1972 and Justice Sonia Sotomayor earned her bachelor’s degree from the Ivy League in 1976.