Kagan Surprised Testy Exchange With Sotomayor Got Attention

Justice Elena Kagan expressed surprise at the attention given to a heated exchange with her frequent ally Sonia Sotomayor, saying the justices aren’t ideological twins.

“We went at each other hammer and tongs,” Kagan said Thursday at a conference of judges and lawyers in Portland, Oregon. She was referring to the court’s May 18 ruling in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, in which the two liberal justices found themselves on opposite sides of the copyright dispute.

But Kagan said court watchers shouldn’t be surprised by the tenor of Sotomayor’s majority opinion and her dissent. “If you think that Justice ...