Elena Kagan. Photo credit: Don Searls

Solicitor General Elena Kagan is President Obama’s nomination for Justice of the US Supreme Court to fill the vacancy from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. This week her confirmation hearings are going ahead. Kagan is a relatively liberal choice compared with Stevens, though she has remained something of an enigma – at least to the media.

Day three of Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings is underway, and although the media – including The Guardian – may not be “consumingly fascinated” with the proceedings, there is still plenty to talk about. And the focus, so far, has been on Kagan’s competence. She seems to be “handling herself with aplomb,” said Michael Tomasky in The Guardian.

Kagan has been sternly quizzed on the military and on her political views. MSNBC noted her “cool demeanour”. According to its reporter, Kelly O’Donnell, both Republicans and Democrats have “found reasons to smile”.

But Josh Gerstein on Politico referred to Republicans “pouncing” on the “less-than-crystal-clear answer” Kagan gave to a question by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) about whether the government would potentially have the right to micromanage Americans’ diets. “Kagan’s noncommittal answer seemed to suggest that Congress had carte blanche to create a nanny state that would regulate Americans’ day-to-day lives,” commented Gerstein.

The San Francisco Chronicle focused on Kagan’s declaration that justices should seek greater consensus when possible, noting that she also refused “to criticize the divided decisions reached by the court under Chief Justice John Roberts”. “The court is served best and our country is served best when people trust the court as an entirely nonpolitical body,” Kagan said.

The Washington Post looked at Kagan’s consensus with Chief Justice John Roberts that justices “basically act like baseball umpires in deciding complex legal issues”. But the paper also reported Kagan’s caveat that the metaphor isn’t quite that simple.

Associated Press provided various reports on Kagan’s progress during the confirmation, including her diplomatic refusal to criticize the current Supreme Court and her “careful” negotiation of “tough” Republican questioning on military recruitment at Harvard Law School, gun owners’ rights and free speech.

Kagan Watch focused on her response to a question about the 2000 Presidential Election. Asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee about her opinion of a case “the court will never see again”, Kagan replied that, au contraire, something of this magnitude may well come before the Supreme Court in the future.