Kagan testifies on solicitor general role

Harvard Law dean Elena Kagan told a Senate committee today that if she is confirmed as President Obama's top lawyer, she would defend federal law and policy even if she personally disagrees with it.

Bloomberg reports that Kagan, who would represent Obama before the US Supreme Court as solicitor general, said that had she been in the job at the time, she would have stood up for government policy penalizing universities that didn’t provide equal access to military recruiters.

As dean at Harvard Law, Kagan was part of a challenge to that policy -- and lost a unanimous Supreme Court decision in 2006.

"There’s a clear obligation on the part of the solicitor general to defend the statute in that circumstance unless there’s no reasonable basis to argue for the statute,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee. With the military recruitment policy, “of course there was a reasonable basis,” she added.