Elena Kagan should not be on the Supreme Court.  Her track record shows she does not value individual freedom.  Any Supreme Court justice must hold freedom dear.  That shortcoming disqualifies her for the court.

When I was a law student at Brigham Young University, we had a career services office.  The career services office welcomed all employers.  We had oil companies, environmental groups, prosecutors, criminal defenders, insurance defense firms and trial attorneys.  The school did not act paternalistically by banning some employers and allowing others.  Instead, the school treated the law students like adults and let us decide who we wanted to work for.

While at Harvard, Kagan banned the U.S. military from recruiting on campus.  President Obama has defended the action by claiming that she only banned the military from recruiting at the law school.  I say, so what.  It doesn’t matter whether you agree with the Iraq war or the Bush war on terror.   In my mind, she showed contempt to the law students at Harvard by taking away their choice to join the military.  Her actions show a dangerous elitist trait in which she believes that she has the right to impose her beliefs on other adults.

Her actions at Harvard are not the only troubling  about her.  She also wrote a law review article in which she urged the Supreme Court to change current law to allow the government to ban hate speech.  Some governments have already done that.  For example, in Germany it is illegal to display a swastika.  The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to ban hate speech.  It still holds that all political speech is protected.

The trouble with changing the law and allowing the government to ban hate speech is where do you draw the line.  Some people with political leanings similar to Kagan view a lot of speech as hate speech.  You don’t have to stretch very far to find a situation where Kagan might believe that speaking against gay marriage is hate speech.  What about the tea party movement.  Some have characterized that movement as hate speech.

A Supreme Court justice is given a life time appointment with free reign to shape U.S. law.  We should not be appointing justices who do not value freedom over pushing a certain ideology.  Kagan’s history shows she lacks this essential attribute.