Obama's Supreme Court nominees

President Obama Announces Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan

President Barack Obama on Monday nominated the administration’s chief lawyer, Elena Kagan, to serve on the highest U.S. court.

Ms. Kagan, 50, would become the just the fifth woman to be a justice of the Supreme Court and join two other women currently on the nine-member bench.

Currently serving as Mr. Obama’s solicitor general, Ms. Kagan argues cases on behalf of the administration before the Supreme Court. She has never been a judge, the first time since the 1970s that an individual without experience in the judicial branch has been nominated.

Mr. Obama called Ms. Kagan “one of the nation’s foremost legal minds” with “a firm grasp of the nexus and boundaries between our three branches of government.” Ms. Kagan, a former dean of Harvard Law School, called the Supreme Court the “foundation of our democracy” and said she was honoured to accept Mr. Obama’s nomination.

The Senate must approve Ms. Kagan’s nomination and opposition Republicans in statements said they would take a careful look at her record in the coming weeks.

Ms. Kagan would replace Justice John Paul Stevens, 90, who is to retire at the end of the court’s current term in June.

She is Mr. Obama’s second pick to serve on the Supreme Court. Last year he nominated Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who became the first Hispanic member of the top court.