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The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking up the nomination of Elena Kagan to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Judiciary Committee members and Elena Kagan are making opening statements and will move to the question and answer session beginning Tuesday. She will be introduced by Massachusetts Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Scott Brown (R-MA). The committee plans four days of hearings with the questioning of the nominee Tuesday and Wednesday and outside witnesses on Thursday. If confirmed, Elena Kagan will replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens on the Court.

Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said. ”I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist Supreme Court that would strike down laws restricting property rights.” That caught me off guard, and I had no recollection of making so atypical a statement, which shook me up even more. “Now, it would seem to me what you...

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan smiles on as she takes her seat on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday June 28, 2010, prior to the start of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is telling senators she'll do her best to consider cases impartially and with judicial humility, as she begins Judiciary Committee hearings facing Republicans charges that she'd let her political views color her decisions as a justice. "I will do my best to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle, and in accordance with law," Kagan plans to tell senators as she heads into a marathon week of high-pressure vetting before the Judiciary panel, pressing to portray herself as a mainstream addition to the court.