Thursday round-up

Above the Law reports that newly confirmed Justice Elena Kagan has hired four law clerks, three of whom have just finished clerking for other Justices.  David Lat describes Kagan’s hiring of Allon Kedem, a former clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy as “very shrewd,” explaining that Kedem “knows how [Justice Kennedy]  thinks and how the swing Justice will approach the cases.”

At a post at Forbes, Andrew Schnekel speculates on how “green” the new Justice may be. He notes that as the dean at Harvard, Justice Kagan oversaw the creation of the school’s Environmental Law Program and an Environmental Law and Policy Clinic.

Briefly:

• Ezra Klein of the Washington Post links to a discussion by John Sides on why Supreme Court Justices are serving longer terms than ever before.
• Ed Whelan at Bench Memos responds to yesterday’s criticism of the confirmation process by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post.
• Journalism.org compares news coverage of the nomination and confirmation process for Justices Sotomayor and Kagan; the report concludes that, “Kagan’s path to the High Court proved to be of considerably of less interest to the media than that of her predecessor.”
• According to the Washington Post, the Court’s Office of the Curator is accepting applications for docents.