Documents from Kagan's service in the Clinton White House, including her own e-mails as a policy aide and lawyer, reinforce the portrait that's emerged in recent weeks: a politically savvy, sometimes hard-edged strategist whose views of the Constitution are at odds with those of conservatives.
In a 1997 e-mail about former Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan wrote admiringly of her legal mentor's view of the Constitution as a "living charter" and his concern as a justice for "the underdog."
It's not surprising language coming from a Democratic president's nominee. It's also probably going to underscore the Republicans' line of argument that she will be a liberal activist from the bench.
From the records, there is scant evidence about what kind of justice Kagan would be. Supporters suggest she can serve as a consensus-builder among deeply divided conservatives and liberals on the nine-member court.
In addition, newly released records from the Defense Department that detail her dispute with the Pentagon on military recruiters' access to the campus of Harvard Law School, where she was dean, appear to contain little ammunition for GOP critics.
These documents show that long before Kagan decided to bar recruiters from the campus career services office because of the military's policy against openly gay soldiers, at least one Pentagon official said the approach gave recruiters access that matched that of other prospective employers at the law school.
"Thank you for providing our military recruiters a degree of access to students that is equal in quality and scope to that afforded to other employers," an Army judge advocate recruiter wrote in 1998 to Kagan's predecessor, who set the policy she would later use.
The Obama White House has worked to ensure that no revelation from the documents harms Kagan's chances. Working with former President Bill Clinton, officials shielded from public view most details about Kagan's work on the scandals that in many ways defined his tenure. That includes her role defending him from the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit that led to his impeachment.
In all, nearly 160,000 pages were unearthed, including 80,000 pages of e-mail - an unprecedented release for a Supreme Court nominee. They were dribbled out on Friday afternoons, the customary time in official Washington for releasing unfavorable information or material one hopes attracts little notice. The e-mails emerged late Friday afternoon; the Pentagon documents on Saturday.
Conservative activists say that's no accident.
The Clinton-era documents portray Kagan as a "political operative ... with disdain for the Second Amendment and the NRA (National Rifle Association), concern for currying favor with gay and lesbian groups, and support for judges who will decide cases by giving an edge to 'the underdog' and interpreting the Constitution as a 'living,' malleable document," said Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network.
The timing, she added, "represents the Obama administration's best political maneuver to hide any information revealed about the president's Supreme Court nominee in the Saturday papers."
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