Kagan has reputation a bridge builder

Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama's choice to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice, brings a reputation as a bridge builder with a knack for forging consensus amid political and philosophical discord.

As an aide to President Bill Clinton, Kagan crafted an agreement with Republican Senator John McCain on legislation to allow federal regulation of tobacco. As dean of Harvard Law School, she won over conservative colleagues -- and eased ideological strife among the faculty -- by supporting a former George W. Bush administration lawyer for a teaching position.

Those skills would be tested on a Supreme Court where Kagan, 50, stands to become the youngest and newest justice, as well as the only one without prior judicial experience. Kagan, now the U.S. solicitor general, would replace the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, whose coalition-building skills helped eke out liberal victories in recent years on terrorism and consumer lawsuits.

"Elena was the most successful law school dean in the past quarter century, due in large part to her ability to bring warring factions together," said Walter Dellinger, a Washington appellate lawyer who worked with Kagan when he was solicitor general under Clinton. "Whether that transfers to the Supreme Court remains to be seen."

Obama will announce his selection of Kagan at the White House at 10:00 a.m. Washington time today, a person familiar with the decision said.

Obama opted for Kagan even though her career path doesn't speak to some of the criteria he laid out. The president said last month that he wanted a Supreme Court justice who "has the kind of life experience so that they understand how their decisions are impacting ordinary people."

Elite ResumeThe New York-born Kagan's resume, by contrast, is studded with academic and policy achievements and affiliations with elite institutions. She received a bachelor's degree at Princeton University, a master's in philosophy at Oxford University's Worcester College and a law degree at Harvard.She clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court and spent two years as a litigator before taking a teaching job at the University of Chicago Law School, where she helped recruit Obama to the faculty.She worked in the Clinton administration's White House counsel's office and then as a domestic policy adviser, acting as the administration's lead negotiator on anti-tobacco legislation.The 1998 agreement she negotiated with McCain and FDA officials would have given the agency the same power over cigarettes that it has over drugs and medical devices.'Persuaded Everybody'"She's the one who persuaded everybody," said William Schultz, then the FDA's chief negotiator and now a lawyer at Zuckerman Spaeder LLP in Washington. The measure made it to the Senate floor before being defeated. Congress authorized the FDA to regulate tobacco in legislation Obama signed last June.She became the first female dean of Harvard Law School in 2003 and last year became the first female solicitor general, the federal government's top Supreme Court advocate.Kagan, who is Jewish, isn't married and doesn't have children. Stevens' retirement will leave the court without any Protestant members for the first time and with only one native midwesterner, Chief Justice John Roberts.Kagan has limited her public comments on policy issues, creating only a handful of openings for opponents to attack her fitness for the court. When Obama nominated her to be the first female solicitor general last year, even though she had never argued a case in court, some Republicans questioned whether she had enough experience for the post.Military RecruitersRepublicans also criticized Kagan's work to block military recruiters from the Harvard Law School campus because of the services' ban on acknowledged homosexuals. With Kagan's support, Harvard backed a challenge to a law requiring universities receiving federal funding to give the military equal access. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law in 2006.Obama has chosen "an individual who places a higher premium on political progressivism than adherence to the set of laws that have made this country strong and free," said David McIntosh, a former Republican congressman and the co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society.Even so, Kagan's solicitor general nomination received support from prominent Republicans, including former Republican solicitors general Theodore Olson, Kenneth Starr and Charles Fried. She won confirmation 61-31.Strong FacultyFried, a fellow Harvard professor, credited Kagan with creating the strongest faculty at the school in a half-century."She showed an ability to put aside disagreements with a candidate's political or intellectual disposition and to see only the quality of the candidate's intellectual ability and potential contribution," Fried wrote.Kagan left a "positive impression" when she testified at her nomination hearing, said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina.Kagan hit some bumps in the courtroom as solicitor general. Her first argument was a defense of federal limits on corporate election spending; the court ruled against her in a 5-4 decision that allowed unlimited spending and prompted criticism from Obama at his State of the Union address.During Kagan's 30-minute argument, Chief Justice John Roberts bombarded her with 30 questions, most of them skeptical, establishing what has become a pattern of confrontation between the two. Roberts again asked a question a minute in a case involving the constitutionality of a federal accounting oversight board.Roberts told Kagan in another case that her position was "absolutely startling."Her stint as solicitor general likely would limit her ability to participate in cases as a justice early on. The last solicitor general to ascend to the court, Marshall, disqualified himself in dozens of cases in his first term because his office had played a role in the litigation.