Judicial Monastery News Today

>> hasnt spent one day that robe. >> reporter: oh, yeah? what do you think about her in a robe and gavel in her high school year back? >> the judicial monastery. >> vice president biden wasnt talking like a monk. the last big ceremony in the east room. this time we waited with baited breath and started whispering next to the open mike. >> go get em kid, love i cant, thats not a gaffe either. you should have been listen to the golf champ. when tiger woods withdrew because of a possible bulging di...

I think her mother would relish this moment. i think she would relish, as i do, the prospect of three women taking their seat on the nations highest court for the first time in history. >> of course that was president obama just a short time ago announcing elena kagans nomination. norah odonnell, chief washington correspondent, norah, its interesting patrick leahy, senator leahy said, quote, they would like to see someone outside the judicial monastery, maybe harvard can be included. another nam...

Comes off looking like amateur wife swapping. but a spouse would know better than to divulge kagans nickname. >> shorty. >> shes confident, shes intelligent, she is short. >> reporter: so short at 53", that president obama gallantly -- >> let me get this out for you. >> reporter: -- pulled out a pedestal for kagan to step on to. not that we in the press ever use anything to make us easier to see. whether kagan climbs to the highest judicial rung may hinge on the argument that shes never even bee...

Without judicial experience. the question is whether thats some sort of asset as the white house seems to claim or some sort of deficiency that needs to be compensated for. >> what do you character it as? >> i think its a deficiency. best training is experience. elena kagan said as much in a law review article she wrote 15 or so years ago. have in mind that while she may be outside the judicial monastery, shes lived a cloistered life in the confines of academia. not as though vibrant real life, ...

Harvard law degree. three others yale. i should say four others yale. clearly thats an ivy league background. judicial monastery, talking about being a judge. it is true elena kagan has not been a judge. the first nonjudge in 40 years as william renquist. as people point out william renquist went on to be chief justice and he was not a judge, so that wasnt a problem. the president wanted real life experience, excellence, experience, integrity, a passion for the law. he characterized her as a tra...

President obama did that as a senator. id like to get us back to where we were before. >> senator, theres been some talk that the president would like to find somebody outside the so-called judicial monastery. my question to you is, would you support a nominee who had had no prior judging experience? >> i could. i could do that. you know, it is true that weve gotten to a point where everybody on the courts from harvard or yale and theyre tremendously well qualified like justice roberts or alito....