Socialism and the Supreme Court -- Kagan, Roberts and the search for college papers

As the Senate Judiciary committee readies confirmation hearings on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, the White House has decided to release her 1981 Princeton University senior thesis. Why? Because the conservative blog redstate.com tried to make an issue of it, arguing that the thesis proves her socialist sympathies.

The 130-page thesis, entitled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933,” argues:

In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter.

Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties?

Noting the internal back-stabbing that felled the socialist political movement in New York, Kagan....

...wrote: "The story is a sad, but also a chastening one for those, who more than a half century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism.... American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."

To Sean Wilentz, Kagan's thesis adviser, a history professor now writing a book about Bob Dylan, the assertion that Kagan shows support for socialism is bunk. "Elena Kagan is about the furthest thing from a socialist. Period," he told the Daily Princetonian. "And always had been. Period.” To redstate.com, Princeton's claim that it could not release the thesis for copyright reasons smelled suspicious, one reason the White House decided to release the document itself.

Of course when Chief Justice John Roberts was first nominated to the court in 2005, the conservative Weekly Standard dug up his senior honors thesis at Harvard.

Entitled, “Marxism and Bolshevism: Theory and Practice” and “Old and New Liberalism: The British Liberal Party's Approach to the Social Problem,” the 166-page paper opens, "Established institutions are periodically assailed by new social forces which test their ability to survive."

Of course in Roberts' case, the Weekly Standard found the thesis evidence not of socialist tendencies but of a brilliant and scholarly mind whose owner would make a stellar Supreme Court justice.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Kagan at Princeton, along with title page of her senior thesis. Credit: Princeton University/Newsweek

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Comments

[No Jobs = No Recovery]

The Senate needs to take an in-depth thorough review Elena Kagan. They need to determine if has any biased about certain important issues, such as Gay Marriage or Gays in the military and “Don’t ask Don’t tell”, especially because it has been alleged that she is a lesbian. It also concerns me that she has no judicial experience and does not appear to be a qualified candidate. I hope the Senate could review this and make a determination about her qualifications.

[Steffan Lozinak]

I see no reason why this should hold an issue and even moreso, see no reason at all why people who may view socialism as a possibility should be considered"anti american". I think it is anti-american to think that the best way to do things is to never allow for anything new.

Technology improves and is constantly adapting. If technology took the same stance as our politics and government, we would still be using the abacus to solve problems. It is not Anti-American to try to think of potential better ways for America to function. That is what we call progress and intelligence.

[SummerRain]

I think it would be most interesting to see what she has said in the past to see if she is can just interpert the law or bring her own, personal agenda to the high court.

[Vic]

Why won't the white house release any of Obama's papers? I mean, just to show that he is not a socialist/radical himself and that he is the moderate that he claimed to be during the election in 2008.

I have no problem with someone being a socialist; we just need to know the truth up front and have the discussion.

[Tom Sharp]

I have no problem with Ms. Kagan and I don't care one bit about her sexual tendencies (so long as she doesn't try to influence me or my children by making them public). What does matter to me is that we have been entrusted by our forefathers to conserve the constitution and the personal freedoms it was designed to protect. If Ms. Kagan believes that a move towards big government socialism is best for this country, then she does not know the framers (who were all God- and Big Government-fearing men) and she does not know the constitution (which founded the country as a democratic republic severely limiting the powers of the federal government). These two things are of primary importance for anyone wanting to serve out a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.

I hope and pray, for all of our sakes, conservative and liberal alike, that Ms. Kagan is now or soon becomes a constitutional conservative who will pass judgement in a non-political way as to whether the issue in front of her truly reflects a constitutional question and then, and only then, that she passes judgment in such a way as to protect the freedom of the citizenry of this nation from an ever-growing, omnipotent federal government.

God Bless America!

[Georgeanne]

Kagan's piece bemoans the fact that a "radical party never attained the status of a major political force" WITHIN THE USA and posits advice for those who "still wish to change America".

There is NO PARALLEL between her obvious personal support for a "radical party" in this country and Roberts' discussion of Bolshivism and Marxism in the context of the history of the Soviet Union and the British Liberal Party.

Kagan is a Socialist; Roberts is not.