[1] Those considered front-runners for the nomination by press reports, in addition to Elena Kagan, were Diane Wood and Merrick Garland.

[2] Kagan had also been a finalist for the Court vacancy one year earlier, when Justice Sonia Sotomayor was selected to succeed the retiring David Souter.

The last justices to join the Court without any prior judicial experience had been Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist, both appointed by President Richard Nixon in 1972.

[7] Even so, minority whip Jon Kyl, who supported Kagan's nominations for solicitor general (a "temporary political appointment") but was reticent to support her associate justice (a "lifetime appointment"),[6] all but ruled out using a filibuster to block a final Senate floor vote on the nomination, telling CBS's Face the Nation, "The filibuster should be relegated to extreme circumstances, and I don't think Elena Kagan represents that.

[9] The deans of over one-third of the country's law schools, 69 people in total, endorsed Elena Kagan's nomination in an open letter in early June.

The letter lauded what it considered her coalition-building skills and "understanding of both doctrine and policy" as well as her written record of legal analysis.

All Democrats, except for Ben Nelson, voted for her, as did Independents Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders, and five Republicans: Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, Judd Gregg, Richard Lugar, and Olympia Snowe.