Kagan: You’ll Get Me, Not Marshall

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan told Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) that while she admires former Justice Thurgood Marshall, she will be a different justice than he was.

“I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time exactly to what Justice Marshall would have said,” Kagan said. “I love Justice Marshall, but if you confirm me, you’ll get Justice Kagan, not Justice Marshall.”

Kyl has used a great deal of his 30-minute question time today to attack Marshall’s judicial philosophy, which he has insinuated she might share because she clerked for Marshall during the Court’s 1987-1988 term. As my colleague noted earlier, the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee have already repeatedly used Kagan’s Marshall connection as a line of attack over the course of the hearings.