"We talked about the Citizens United case and she said she thought the court was not sufficiently deferential to Congress."
That's from Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) after a meeting with Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. As The Hill reports:
Specter declined to say whether he would support her nomination, but his comments pave the way for a yes vote.
"She was very forthcoming in our discussion," Specter said. "We talked about the Citizens United case and she said she thought the court was not sufficiently deferential to Congress.
"The issue of deference to Congress on fact-finding matters is something which I consider very important."
Perhaps Kagan will now let us know about the other big cases where she thinks the Supreme Court was insufficiently deferential to federal or state lawmakers. Perhaps she thinks the Court in D.C. v. Heller should have sided with the local officials who banned handguns. What about the Texas lawmakers that criminalized sodomy? Perhaps Kagan agrees with Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, where he criticized the majority for being "impatient with democratic change." As President Barack Obama told us last month, "the concept of judicial restraint cuts both ways."
For more on Kagan's troubling embrace of judicial deference, see my column today.