WASHINGTON — For four years as a White House lawyer and aide, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan had a hand in many of the major issues that drove and vexed the Clinton administration.
Nearly 90,000 pages of records from the Clinton White House, released at the request of senators who will vote on her nomination, show that Kagan played a role in crafting Clinton’s policies on abortion, gun control, welfare reform and tobacco.
They also reveal that she was among the small army of lawyers who worked unsuccessfully to postpone Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton. His testimony for the lawsuit, denying a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, helped lead to his impeachment.
Kagan must have impressed her superiors because Clinton sought to reward her, at age 38, with a seat on the federal appeals court in Washington, often a steppingstone to the Supreme Court.
When Kagan wrote Clinton to thank him for the nomination, the president sent back a handwritten response: “I was honored to nominate you — you will be a wonderful judge if we can get you through — and young enough to have a profound impact.”
She didn’t get through, stalled by the Republican-controlled Senate until Clinton left office in January 2001. But now, at 50, Kagan still would be the youngest member of the current high court.
The William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., has not released about 11,000 pages of Kagan’s e-mails. Republicans renewed complaints that the documents are emerging too slowly for her confirmation hearing, scheduled to begin June 28.
“I remain deeply concerned that Ms. Kagan’s records will not be fully produced in time for the committee to conduct a proper review,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Many documents reinforce the idea that Kagan tried to fashion compromises across a range of issues, faced with the difficult political reality of a Democratic White House and Republican Congress.
Her work on tobacco legislation sought to bridge differences between public-health advocates and cigarette makers as well as attract a bipartisan majority in Congress.
In a July 1997 memo to Clinton on drug sentencing guidelines, Kagan and her boss, Bruce Reed, counseled a middle-ground policy to reduce — but not eliminate — the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.
They said Clinton could expect criticism both from Republicans, who would call the position soft on drug users, and the Congressional Black Caucus, which would accuse the administration of “failing to go far enough to remove a racial injustice.”
