This morning President Obama named Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his nomination to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. I have to say, it wasn’t much of a surprise.
We’ve been monitoring the search for Justice Stevens’ replacement using Spark, our comprehensive Internet monitoring tool, and without even being a search-term keyword, Kagan was mentioned in no less than 17 out of the top 25 most influential posts about the topic, from as far back as April 12.
She was also the highest-ranked name in the insight outside of the word “Obama,” with “Kagan” appearing in 34.5% of all URLs related to the topic. On a sidenote, the word “gay” appeared in 17% of all URLs.
The posts containing “gay” are in relation to two things:
First, she is a strong gay rights advocate. She signed a brief arguing that the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bans gay troops from serving openly violates the legal profession’s anti-discriminatory policies. In a an email to faculty and students, Kagan called the policy “a profound wrong – a moral injustice of the first order.”
Secondly, rumors about Kagan’s own sexuality continue to swirl, much to the White House’s chagrin.
Some people, however, believe Kagan is too far to the right. Either way, if she is confirmed, Kagan would be the youngest justice (she’s 50) on the nine-member court. If her nomination is approved, Obama would be leaving a lasting legacy on the makeup of the Court.
Click on the semantic cloud to the right to see the other top 99 words related to the new Supreme Court nomination in a bigger image.
Photo from news.harvard.edu.
