The Annotated Bobblehead Justice Elena Kagan

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Elena Kagan, 2010-

Elena Kagan was born in New York City in 1960. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1981 and received an M.Phil in 1983 from Worcester College, Oxford University. In 1986, Kagan earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, where she was supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. After serving as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and as clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, she worked as an associate at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C. In 1991, Kagan returned to academia as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School, receiving tenure in 1995. From 1995-1999, she was associate counsel to President Clinton and then served as deputy assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council. After joining Harvard Law School as a visiting professor in 1999, she became a professor of law in 2001 and was appointed the law school’s 11th Dean in 2003. In 2009, she became the 45th Solicitor General of the United States after nomination from President Barack Obama, who then nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 2010.