The Kagan Hearings
By One the one hand, I agree with Rosen here, with the major caveat that “more substantive that the last three hearings” is a bar comparable to a major league team having a better shortstop than Yuniesky Betancourt. Kagan’s answers have come closer to reflecting how Supreme Court actually works than has become the recent norm, and she has sometimes avoided the emptiest “we just apply the law” cliches of Roberts and Alito.
On the other hand, the hearings still haven’t told us much of anything about what kind of justice she’ll be beyond the very broad parameters established by her past political service. And her (unsurprisingly) strong performace as a nominee just underlines what a wasted opportunity the pick was — she could have been confirmed just as easily as Breyer and Ginsburg were (if not by the same vote margin), so why pick her now?