美国联邦最高法院提名者Elena Kagan

I'm Shepard Smith this is the Fox Report, it's the bottom of the hour, time for the top of the news.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is expected to start meeting with senators within the next couple of days in advance of her eventual confirmation hearing, if senators do eventually confirm her, the court will have 3 women justices for the first time, it will also be the first time that no Protestants would sit on the court, instead there will be 6 judges, justices who were Catholic and 3 including Kagan who are Jewish. It's also worth noting that Elena Kagan would be replacing the eldest justice -- judge John Paul Stevens, who is 90 years old. Elena Kagan herself would be the youngest just 50 years old, but she’s gotten a lot done in those decades.

Elena Kagan was born in 1960 here in NYC, not too far from where Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor grew up. So if Kagan makes the court, there’s some cross-town rivalry possible.

“This appreciation for diverse views may also come in handy as a die-hard Mets fan serving alongside her new colleague-to-be, Yankees fan Justice Sotomayor, who I believe has ordered a pinstripe robe for the occasion.”

Growing up, Kagan’s mom was a teacher, her dad a lawyer, her brothers would walk in mom’s footsteps, she would follow her father's. Kagan attended Hunter College High School in the city; the NY Times reports one classmate remembers Kagan having a lofty ambition then to become a Supreme Court justice.  Kagan would get her bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Her master's from Oxford .For law school, she got into both Yale and Harvard and the Times reports her father, a Yale alone was crushed when she went to Crimson. After graduation she started her career with clerkships, including one for somebody she admired.

"She’s often referred to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall for whom she clerked as her hero. I understand that he reciprocated by calling her ‘Shorty’."

After wonder whether that nickname had anything to do with her basketball game, the Times reports Kagan played in a pick-up game with other clerks at the building’s top floor court, the one they call the highest court in the land.

“She has drawn a claim as a pragmatic problem solved with the…"

During Kagan’s confirmation hearing for Solicitor General, Senator Jack Reed explained what happened in the years that followed.

”As the Chairman indicated, she went on to  teach law at the University of Chicago Law School, she served in the Clinton administration , and then she returned to Harvard Law School in 1999 ."

She became the law school’s first woman dean and faced controversy for trying to bar military recruiters from campus, because of opposition to the “DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL” policy, but supporters say she developed a good reputation as someone who could bring people together. The Fox News contributor Lizz Weal , a Harvard alone says Kagan even hosted poker parties in her home to bring together liberal and conservative professors. Bringing together liberals and conservatives, that’s one thing at the poker table.  Now all other remains is to see whether she will have similar success in the US senate.

Well in other news today…