Elena Kagan has served as associate justice of the Supreme Court since 2010. The previous year she served as U.S. solicitor general, the first woman to hold that position.
Between 2003 and 2009, Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School. During her tenure she led a reform of the curriculum, an expansion of the faculty, created major initiatives to support public service, and worked to make the school more student-centered, among other achievements. She first came to the school as a visiting professor in 1999 and became professor of law in 2001 and later the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law. She taught administrative law, constitutional law, civil procedure, and seminars on issues involving the separation of powers.
From 1995 to 1999, Kagan served in the Clinton administration as associate counsel to the president, as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy, and as deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council.
Kagan launched her scholarly career at the University of Chicago Law School, where she became an assistant professor in 1991 and a tenured professor of law in 1995. She clerked for Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1986 to 1987, and the following year, she clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She then worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly from 1989 to 1991. Kagan received an A.B. from Princeton in 1981, an M. Phil. from Oxford in 1983. She then attended Harvard Law School, where she was supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review, graduating in 1986.