The vote was along party lines with one exception -- South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham voted for Kagan.

"I'm going to vote for her because I believe the last election had consequences and this president chose someone who is qualified, who has the experience and knowledge to serve on this court," Graham said. "At the end of the day, it wasn't a hard decision. I think she did a very good job and she will serve this nation honorably."

Kagan is expected to be confirmed by the Senate, where newly appointed interim West Virginia Sen. Carte Goodwin gives Democrats a 59 to 41 advantage over Republicans. If confirmed, Kagan would be the fourth female justice ever and the third currently serving.

Elena Kagan is one of this country's leading legal minds, and has shown throughout this process that, if confirmed, she would be a fair and impartial Supreme Court Justice who understands how decisions made by the Court affect the lives of everyday Americans. Today's vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee is a bipartisan affirmation of her strong performance during her confirmation hearings. I want to thank the Judiciary Committee for giving her a thorough, timely and respectful hearing, and I look forward to the full Senate taking up and voting on this nomination before the August recess.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl criticized Kagan for not being more open during her confirmation hearings and said he thought Kagan's personal views on policy issues would have too much influence on her decisions as a judge. He voted against her.

In declaring his support for Kagan, Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter said he wasn't surprised that the vote was divided along party lines because of the ideological battle between liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

Specter also criticized Kagan for dodging several questions posed during her confirmation. We examined how open Kagan was during the hearings in this Rundown post.

A Washington Post/ABC poll found that a majority of Americans, 53 percent, support her confirmation.

But how much do Americans really know about the nominee? Another poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News in late June showed that 47 percent didn't know enough about her to form an opinion.

An online poll from C-SPAN found only 19 percent of respondents could name Kagan as President Obama's nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Sixty-seven percent could not name a single case heard by the Supreme Court.

But to Sen. Arlen Specter, she was far less candid: "You have followed the pattern which has been in vogue since Bork," he told the supreme court nominee.

Overall, Kagan was about as candid as recent nominees and she received about as many questions, according to political science professors Dion Farganis and Justin Wedeking in a just-published study of the Supreme Court nominee's hearings. Here's how often (as a percent of questions asked) she was "very forthcoming" with each senator:

Her 680 exchanges (basically, a question and answer, or possibly some banter back and forth), was slightly higher than Sonia Sotomayor (546) and just lower than George W. Bush's nominees, John Roberts (717) and Samuel Alito (781).

After the jump, we check in with to the two professors about their Kagan analysis, and what might make the hearings better.

Dion Farganis, Elon University: It certainly seems that the hearings have found their groove, so to speak. The fact that the number of questions, the type of questions, and the candor level have all remained very stable over the past several hearings certainly suggests that what we saw last week is likely to be repeated the next go-around. Taking an even longer view, nominee candor has held fairly steady for more than a half-century. So it's unlikely, based on what we've seen up to this point, that things would change too much in the future. But it's always important to remember that under different political conditions, or with a very controversial nominee, things could change -- and we could get a "new normal."

Justin Wedeking, University of Kentucky: For the most part, yes, this is how hearings will be for the foreseeable future. We are starting to see some indicators of a routine developing that were not present in the earlier hearings. For example, for the past 25 years, the percentage of questions coming from opposing party senators has been consistently in the 50-60% range. A few other things to consider:

Some of this "routinization" can be attributed to what we call "selection effects," due to the fact that nomination hearings were highly salient in the past. Presidents are now guaranteed that nominees will be heavily scrutinized at the hearings, regardless of who is nominated. Presidents want to avoid something embarrassing from surfacing during these hearings (or have it lead to an unfavorable Senate vote). Knowing this, presidents are more likely to select a nominee that has been thoroughly vetted and less likely to have any "skeletons" in the closet. Thus, "selection effects" can contribute to a more "normalized" hearing process by influencing who ultimately gets nominated. Consistent with this, Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination before the hearings, likely because it would have been much different than say the recent four hearings (Roberts, Alito, Sotomayo, and Kagan) because of the gap in perceived qualifications.

One factor that may lead to a particular hearing "heating up," is Divided vs. Unified Government. For the last six hearings, we have had unified government. If the president nominates someone agreeable to senators of his party, then the president can usually expect a relatively "normal" hearing. Senators from the opposing party generally know they have little leverage during the hearings if they are in the minority party, their only real option is to keep asking probing questions about the nominee's views in hopes to get them to stumble. In sum, divided government would likely lead to a hearing that will deviate from the routine.

With recent nominees learning from earlier hearings, it is likely that nominees believe these hearings will do little to "win" votes, with their answers more likely to "lose" votes if they "trip-up" or "stumble." Knowing this, and based on what we've seen in our study, nominees are increasingly likely to offer the reason of "the issue will be before the Court" as an excuse for being evasive. This is usually acceptable to most senators, as evidenced by several of the senators not pressing on when Kagan gave this as a reason for not answering questions.

What would make these hearings more productive for nominees, senators and those of us watching and trying to understand the process?

DF: For nominees, I suspect they would just as soon not have to answer anything beyond basic questions of biography and qualifications. Questions about substantive issues are like land mines.

In terms of senators, they probably know the hearings would be more productive if they were held behind closed doors. But given how much of a platform the hearings provide, it's unlikely any senator would want to shut out the cameras. Also, I think there are some senators who believe that the hearings would be more productive if the committee as a whole agreed to vote against nominees who did not answer all of its questions. But again, that's unlikely -- if only because at least some of them recognize that nominees do have legitimate constraints on what they can talk about in terms of unsettled issues.

As for the public, there's no doubt that knowing one's way around constitutional law really helps appreciate the hearings -- or at least makes it easier to tell when the nominee is dodging questions. But anyone can easily keep an eye out for discussions of past Supreme Court rulings. Those are the places where the nominees and the senators seem to butt heads quite a bit.

JW: I've seen some major changes discussed as well: make the hearings private or confidential (exclude media and public), or even do away with them altogether. I've also heard some suggestions that nominees be held accountable for things they say if they behave inconsistently once getting on the bench, but might be difficult and costly for senators to enforce. On the other hand, one could argue this relatively "normalized" process is a healthy sign for our democratic government and system of checks-and-balances when there are no major controversies.

For those watching, I would emphasize two basic points to consider: First, a basic principle of our justice system is that our cases will not be prejudged. Americans should ask themselves if they want to take a case before a judge who has already expressed an opinion on it? The answer, I suspect, is that the vast majority of Americans would not want this. Given this, we have to understand that nominees (whether it's Kagan, Sotomayor, Alito, or Roberts) should not answer every single question because it will essentially disqualify them from hearing that case, or one similar to it, once on the court. If a recusal happens, this may leave the court split 4-4, with any decision then lacking the force of precedent and failing to resolve conflict in the lower courts.

Second, observe the questions that nominees do answer candidly. For example, there were several examples from Kagan's hearing where she told us bits about her political and ideological background that spoke to her philosophy: she said she was proud of her work in two Democratic administrations, that she had a progressive philosophy, and that she clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. All of those things point to her having a liberal-leaning philosophy. Now, that does not mean she will be liberal on every single case or issue that comes before the court, but it is an excellent cue for distilling her general ideological beliefs.

Kagan didn't treat all senators equally, you write. She was forthcoming with some and held back with others. What made the difference? Did any senator get her to say more than she might have meant to?

DF: In terms of what made the difference, we still have some work to do to sort all that out. At this point, I think we feel confident saying that the kinds of questions that different senators asked probably made a big difference in how Kagan responded. Leahy's questions, for example, were mostly basic inquiries about judicial philosophy. Specter, by contrast, wanted to know how Kagan would approach specific issues, and he didn't let up when she spoke in generalities. So, the differences in the questioning probably accounts for most of the differences in candor.

JW: To build on Dion's point, the type of question matters. The data show that if it was a question ascertaining Kagan's viewpoint, she was less forthcoming. If it was a factual question, she was more fully forthcoming. For example, approximately 60% of Senator Leahy's questions were of a factual nature, this helps explain why she was 100% candid with him. On the opposite end, 0 percent of Senator Specter's questions were factually based, they were all on her views. This helps explain why Kagan only gave fully forthcoming answers approximately 32 percent of the time.

DF: As for whether any senator got Kagan to say too much, it's of course impossible to know for sure. Having said that, I was a bit surprised by Sen. Graham's ability to get Kagan to characterize her politics as "progressive." Graham has a gift for being disarming, so once again, the explanation for the difference in candor may be tied to the senator who asked the question.

JW: I don't think there were any major bombshells dropped at the hearings, though I was slightly surprised to hear Kagan so readily admit to Senator Leahy that the two recent decisions on gun rights were "binding precedent in... any case." That is where I would have expected some qualification, depending on the facts of the next gun right case that approaches the Supreme Court.

Jokes about lengthy hearings aside, these events are in fact getting longer, and more thorough. Two professors who've studied the process, Dion Farganis of Elon University and Justin Wedeking of the University of Kentucky, compiled and reviewed every question asked of high court nominees since John Marshall Harlan went before the Senate in 1955.

"We find that senators ask more probing questions than in the past," they write in a recent paper, "and that nominees are now more explicit when they refuse to respond--two factors that may be fueling the perception that evasiveness has increased in recent years."

We asked Wedeking to explain his methodology over e-mail. An edited version of that conversation is below the fold:

An exchange is defined as a question from a senator and its corresponding answer from the nominee. To count exchanges, in most situations, this meant a single question and a single response from a nominee.

The vast majority of exchanges were very easy to count. On occasion, we included multiple back-and-forths within a single exchange, such as when the nominee and senator were clearly talking over each other or at the same time, or if the senator added some clarifying remark after the nominee began the answer. Also, note that exchanges can include comments from senators that elicited responses from nominees, even if they were not phrased in the form of a question.

Thus, based on how we define an exchange, our data will not be the same as the raw number of comments uttered by senators or nominees.

The trend seems be toward more questions and longer hearings. Is that a correct reading? What's driving that trend?

Yes, we strongly agree that the trend is towards longer questions and longer hearings. That trend is very clear in the data.

We don't study that specifically in our paper (we document it as one of the changing dynamics of these hearings), but with our findings we can speculate there are a number of possible causes, some of them are not mutually exclusive. I'll list some of these below along with a brief explanation:

• Television: The hearings were first televised with O'Connor and have been ever since. This gives senators more opportunities to ask questions and "score points" with their constituents watching back home. It also lets the public follow along in "real time" rather than read about it in the news paper. This effect is enhanced in the current hearings when combined with the use of e-mail/Facebook/Twitter that people can send a message almost instantaneously to their senators.

• Changing Senate rules: The early hearings were very unbalanced in terms of partisan exchanges, with them being dominated by one party or the other. Not until the mid 1980s do we see things balance out. With this balancing out, a norm appeared that was evidenced by both sides (majority party and minority party) receiving relatively equal time. Thus, for each additional senator that gets to question at the hearings, then a senator from the other party gets time.

• Growing size of the judiciary committee/participation of committee members: In the early years, the size of the committee (or those that participated) was relatively small compared to post 1980 hearings. For example, Senator Sam Ervin was a very dominant figure in early hearings, asking 335 of the 569 exchanges directed at Thurgood Marshall. This unbalance would be unheard of in today's era.

• Senators are more likely to ask about a nominee's views, rather than ask "factual" type questions: When questions focus on views, we find that nominees are less likely to be "very forthcoming" in their responses. In fact, they are more likely to qualify their response, refuse to answer on some grounds, or simply give what we call a "non-answer," where they will talk at length about what the law might be in a certain area, but not answer the question of the senator. When answers are qualified or "dodged," we find that senators are more likely to keep asking those viewpoint questions. Thus, based on this, we find a small-downward decline in the candor of nominees, though we also find some decline in candor during earlier periods of the hearings (so it is not entirely a new phenomenon).

• Growing importance of "ideology" in Senate confirmation voting: There is a finding in the literature that when Senators vote on a nomination, one of the major driving factors is the ideological distance between the nominee and the senator. For example, the closer the nominee to a senator ideologically, the stronger the likelihood of that senator voting in favor of the nominee (and vice versa). Thus, to extract ideological information from the nominee, which they find valuable, they would need to ask more questions of the nominee.

Have recent nominees been more controversial than those of a generation ago? Or has the Senate changed in how it handles them?

• There are some good points to support the claim that both the Senate and the nominees have changed, though, on average, the nominees have probably not been more controversial.

• First, we noted above that some of the Senate is changing how it handles them in terms of rules, time allotment, participation and sharing.

• Second, the senators are changing the types of questions (asking more for a nominees views and less for on facts).

• Third, nominees are also changing in their reasons for being evasive. In addition to a slight decline in the level of their candor, when nominees do not give an answer we consider "fully forthcoming," we find that the reason they give for not answering fully has also shifted over time. Nominees are increasingly likely to reply that the issue or case is potentially coming before the court, or will be before the court in the future. On the other hand, nominees since the early 1980s are less likely to cite concerns about judicial independence. This could be contributing to the perception that nominees are less forthcoming.

• Fourth, there are two nominees that were above the average in the number of exchanges and that appeared to catch many Americans eyes -- Bork and Thomas.

Marcia Coyle, a regular NewsHour analyst and Washington Correspondent for the National Law Journal, spoke with Hari Sreenivasan during the lunch break in Tuesday's Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Coyle is answering some of your questions and helping explain the confirmation process.

Coyle responded: "Absolutely Tom, you're correct, it is quite homogeneous. I think though there are cetainly disadvantages to that, I think President Obama has been trying to diversify the bench somewhat. Right now he's been focused on gender, and also background - lack of judicial experience is something new that will bring different things to the court, if she is confirmed."

Be sure to send us your questions for Marcia @newshour on Facebook, Twitter or in the comments on the Rundown. And watch the NewsHour's live Kagan hearing coverage or read the SCOTUSblog live blog here.

Judy Woodruff and the National Law Journal's Marcia Coyle will be covering the hearings live from Capitol Hill. You can watch their coverage on your local station or right here on a live streaming video feed. We'll also have special Web-only coverage here on the Rundown, where Hari Sreenivasan will ask Coyle your questions durings breaks in the hearings.

You can embed the widget with live streaming video of our coveage above (either 450 or 300 pixels wide), or follow the SCOTUSblog liveblog here.

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We also want to hear from you during this week of hearings: send us your questions on Kagan, the Supreme Court, the confirmation process and the judiciary panel right here on the Rundown or on our Twitter and Facebook pages. Hari Sreenivasan and Judy Woodruff will ask the National Law Journal's Marcia Coyle your questions as part of our live coverage.

Since the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, presidents have made 160 nominations to the Supreme Court and since the early 1800s, those nominees have faced lawmaker approval.

On Monday, Kagan becomes the latest nominee to face Senators weighing her acension to the Supreme Court. As Kagan prepares to face the statements, questions and testimony that comprise this sometimes fiery political process, two veteran NewsHour journalists, long-time Capitol Hill producer Linda Scott and senior correspondent Judy Woodruff, shared what informed viewers of the hearings should be watching for this week.

*When Kagan enters the room, she'll most likely greet and exchange pleasantries with the Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Her entourage will include someone designated from the White House to help shepherd her through the Capitol Hill process.

* The first day will be well-attended by members on both sides of the aisle and by members of the media. After the second day, you'll see fewer and fewer members of the media in the audience. Senators on the second and third day will likely shuffle in and out, depending on how the hearing is going.

* Sen. Sessions is the designated pit-bull on the GOP side of the aisle and will try to question some of her writings during the question and answer portion of the process - particularly her stance on military recruitment.

* Though signs of any kind are not allowed in the room, a heckler almost always tries to disrupt the proceedings. They may not necessarily be wearing the standard dark suit of the Capitol Hill set.

*You can usually tell after the first day of questioning if the hearings will pack any kind of punch. Look for probing questions Republicans ask or if Kagan seems unsure or stumbles through her answers. She has already completed a walk-through of the Hart building, and the committee room. You can bet she's been through mock hearings and has been training for the process.

* Among the senators you may want to watch: Sessions, Orrin Hatch, Lindsey Graham and, for possible comic relief, Al Franken.

And from Judy Woodruff:

I expect what will be different about these hearings from previous Supreme Court confirmation hearings is that there will be far more focus on Kagan's political and academic writings and views. Because she has never served as a judge and has no body of written decisions for the judiciary committee members to pore over, there will be extensive questioning about her writings and speeches as a law student, a Supreme Court law clerk, an aide in the Clinton White House and as Dean of the Harvard Law School.

Republicans will certainly ask about her role in crafting language about abortion as a domestic policy adviser under President Clinton. She'll also likely be challenged about her role as the current Solicitor General and, among other things, on the decision to ask the Supreme Court to overturn a 2007 Arizona immigration enforcement law.

And she'll likely be pressed about statements such as her praise, while Dean at Harvard, of an activist Israeli Supreme Court Justice, whom she stated was " the judge ... in my lifetime who(m) ... has best advanced the values of democracy and human rights, of the rule of law, and of justice."

Democrats will ask questions designed to demonstrate her suitability for the Supreme Court, especially on her intellect and her moderation on controversial issues. They will ask questions aimed at giving her a chance to correct any negative impressions that may be left during Republican questions.

Judy Woodruff is anchoring live coverage of the Kagan hearings from Capitol Hill, featuring the analysis of the National Law Journal's Marcia Coyle, Watch it live on your local PBS station or right here at the Online NewsHour. The hearings start Monday at 12:30pm ET.

Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan begin Monday. (The NewsHour will live stream the hearings all week.) Monday's hearing is scheduled to begin at around 12:30 p.m. at the Hart Senate Office Building.

Each member of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be permitted to deliver opening statements. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Scott Brown, R-Mass., will introduce Solicitor General Kagan. Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will then administer the oath, and Kagan will be invited to make an opening statement. Her statement is expected to begin around 3:45 p.m. The committee will then recess for the day following Kagan's statement.

There are no questions planned for Monday.

The Associated Press offers "a primer" on the senators: "a cast of graybeards, rising stars and a lame duck once in charge."

We turned to our regular Supreme Court analyst, Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal, for some history of the confirmation process and what to expect this time.

The Wall Street Journal offers a viewer's guide to the hearings and this nifty interactive comparing past hearings. Kagan is expected to win confirmation, but as the Journal notes, "each party will aim to score political points."

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza writes that when Kagan appears for her confirmation hearings, "she will be a tabula rasa for large swaths of the American public." In other words, she is an unknown:

"In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week, nearly six in ten (57 percent) didn't know enough about Kagan to offer an opinion.... Asked what they thought of Kagan joining the court, 47 percent said they didn't know enough to venture an opinion."

The New York Times believes:

"[Kagan] arrives for her Senate hearings Monday as one of the most enigmatic nominees for the Supreme Court in recent memory. It's not simply that she has kept her writings and opinions to a minimum through two decades of public life; it's that the contradictions in the thinking she has expressed in public raise as many questions as her silence."

The Post's Anne E. Kornblut and Paul Kane write, "Republicans have struggled to find a compelling line of attack to take against the Supreme Court nominee."

Not so, say Politco's Josh Gerstein and Manu Raju:

"Republicans, who decided early on that they stood little chance of defeating Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, settled instead on making her confirmation process a 'teachable moment' to highlight the dangers of liberal judicial activism."

Slate's Sonja West offers Kagan some advice: "Kagan needs to talk to the American people honestly ... about the job for which she is applying and why she is so qualified to get it."

Sen. Robert Byrd Dies at 92

Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, died early Monday at age 92.

The NewsHour has rounded up some intitial reaction here. We'll have much more about Sen. Byrd on the Rundown later today and on Monday's program.

Heavy Oil Hits Mississippi Coast for First Time

Large patches of thick oil washed ashore in Mississippi on Sunday, the first time crude from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico has hit the state's coast. Oil hit two tourist beaches at Ocean Springs, about 10 miles east of Biloxi, and a beach used by fisherman that is close to an inland marsh. Wildlife officials picked up one pelican covered in oil.

Afghan Corruption Cases Derailed, Billions in U.S. Aid Misdirected

"More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Afghanistan in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad," the Wall Street Journal reports.

And the Washington Post reports, "Afghan prosecutors and investigators have been ordered to cross names off case files, prevent senior officials from being placed under arrest and disregard evidence against executives of a major financial firm suspected of helping the nation's elite move millions of dollars overseas."

Meantime, NATO said Monday that a Taliban commander was among several armed people killed during a search operation in Kandahar, but residents told the AP that the troops killed eight innocent civilians, including two elderly men.

World Leaders Pledge to Cut Deficits in Half

Leaders of the world's largest economies pledged to cut deficits in half by 2013, according to a statement made following the G-20 summit this weekend in Toronto.

Despite President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner "consistently advocating a measured approach to debt reduction that would not stymie growth and lead to a double-dip recession," reports the New York Times, the United States joined the other countries in the announcement.

Kyrgyzstan Approves Constitution

Voters in Kyrgyzstan approved a new constitution Sunday, setting the stage for the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, according to results released Monday of a referendum that was held during the weekend.

Two-thirds of voters turned out on Sunday, just two weeks after ethnic violence killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

In an interview with Hari Sreenivasan, Coyle said that much of the modern confirmation process was shaped by Judge Robert Bork's candidness during his hearings, leading to a failed confirmation vote in 1987. She also said the partisan tenor of confirmations most notably began with Justice Clarence Thomas and has largely remained to date. Presidents have also started to pick nominees with less of a paper trail that could derail their confirmation, she said.

Watch a look back at NewsHour coverage of some of the key developments in how the Supreme Court nomination process has been shaped over the past 30 years.

Politico White House editor Craig Gordon stopped by the Rundown Tuesday to give us a look at their reporting on President Obama's nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to serve on the Supreme Court.

Gordon told us that one issue that might cause the most controversy at Kagan's upcoming confirmation hearings could be her decision as Harvard Law dean to reinstate a policy barring military recruiters from using the school's main recruitment office over the military's ban on openly gay service members.

"I think there's some folks even on the left who are little uncomfortable with this particular decision - you're talking about the military during a time when two wars are going on. You could make an argument that folks from Harvard Law are the best and brightest in the country are the exact type of people you'd love to have leading the military," Gordon said.

Gordon also said that an issue likely to be raised by Republicans is that Kagan is part of the American elite who is unlike average citizens. "She's a person who grew up on the Upper West side of Manhattan, went to some of the most elite colleges in the nation, actually ran arguably one of the most elite law schools in the nation, Harvard Law, worked inside the Clinton administration. This is not a person who has been bagging groceries at Wal-Mart or anything," Gordon said.

President Obama has nominated U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to become the 112th justice on the Supreme Court. During an East Room ceremony on Monday, President Obama described Kagan "as one of the nation's foremost legal minds," and called on the Senate to move swiftly to confirm her.

If confirmed, Kagan, 50, would become the first non-judge to serve on the Supreme Court since 1972. Kagan's confirmation would also bring a third female to the bench for the first time in the high court's history.

Before becoming solicitor general -- a position often referred to as the "10th justice" -- Kagan served as dean of the Harvard Law School, a position she was appointed to by Lawrence Summers, the university's former president and current director of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.

During her tenure at Harvard, Kagan built a reputation as a consensus builder, bridging sometimes deep ideological divides among the school's faculty.

As dean, Kagan was a frequent critic of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed services. She called the policy "a moral injustice of the first order," and briefly barred military recruiters from using campus services. In 2004, Kagan signed a legal brief petitioning the Supreme Court to reverse the Solomon Amendment, a law that denies federal funding to colleges and universities that bar military recruiters from campus. After the court upheld the Solomon rule, Kagan allowed recruiters back.

Kagan joined Harvard from the Clinton White House. She started as an associate counsel before becoming deputy assistant and then deputy director of the president's Domestic Policy Council. In 1999, President Clinton nominated Kagan for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Her nomination stalled, however, after Congressional Republicans declined to schedule a confirmation hearing.

Prior to her White House years, Kagan was a faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School, where she taught alongside Barack Obama, then a Constitutional law professor at the university. She joined the faculty in 1991 after a stint with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Williams & Connolly.

Kagan clerked for Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall from 1987 to 1988. She also clerked for Abner Mikva when he was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"She is a brilliant person," Mikva told the NewsHour. "I had a lot of bright law clerks, she was clearly one of the brightest."

Kagan graduated summa cum laude with a degree in history from Princeton University in 1981. She also holds a master's degree in philosophy from Oxford's Worcester College, as well as a law degree from Harvard, where she graduated magna cum laude.

Richard Fallon, who hired Kagan as a research assistant during her law school days at Harvard, described her as "very practical." Most academics "are dreamy utopians," Fallon told the NewsHour. "It is much more characteristic of Elena to know how is one or another proposal going to work in practice. 'Is there something we can do instead of what is proposed that is better, more practical?' These are questions she asks again and again."

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, left, gets the attention of Solicitor General Elena Kagan at a 2009 forum at Georgetown University Law Center. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

President Barack Obama on Monday is expected to nominate U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, according to multiple reports.

If confirmed, Kagan, 50, would become the first non-judge to serve on the Supreme Court since 1972. Kagan's confirmation would also bring a third female to the bench for the first time in the high court's history.

Kagan's lack of experience as a judge has left her with a scant paper trail -- a characteristic that is likely to worry potential supporters and critics alike.

NPR's Nina Totenberg points out:

"So elusive are her opinions that legal thinkers -- both liberal and conservative -- repeatedly ask the question, 'What does Elena really believe'"

Says the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder:

"The pro-forma criticism will come from the right; the more interesting response will be from the left -- whether Kagan is progressive enough, whether she endorses a variant of the unitary executive theory held by John Yoo and Dick Cheney, whether her scholarship is up to snuff, whether her views on campaign finance mirror those she was asked to argue for as SG."

Scotusblog's Tom Goldstein writes that it's tough to imagine any information coming out that might derail Kagan's nomination:

"The only significant revelations that are reasonably possible at this point would be from the files of the Clinton Administration. But given the length of time this Administration has had to review those materials ... the choice of Kagan means that the White House is convinced that smoking guns will not emerge."

The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen calls Kagan an "ideal Obama jurist":

"In Kagan, Obama has a Supreme Court nominee who has the potential to carry his own constitutional vision of progressive judicial restraint far into the twenty-first century."

Not so for Salon's Glenn Greenwald:

"The prospect that Stevens will be replaced by Elena Kagan has led to the growing perception that Barack Obama will actually take a Supreme Court dominated by Justices Scalia (Reagan), Thomas (Bush 41), Roberts (Bush 43), Alito (Bush 43) and Kennedy (Reagan) and move it further to the Right."

President Obama is expected to announce the nomination at 10 a.m. from the East Room. We'll have lots more here on the site and on Monday's program.

BP Oil Rig Worker Details Blast, Legal Aftermath

Officials from BP are scrambling to figure out their next steps after a setback in this weekend's effort to contain the Gulf Coast oil spill.

Last week, the company lowered a 100-ton structure of steel and concrete over the main leak in an attempt to safely funnel the gushing oil to the surface. On Saturday, though, BP announced the four-story containment box had been clogged by ice-like crystals. A range of new options are now being considered, according to BP, including lowering a smaller box over the leak.

Meantime, new details have emerged about the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that led to the massive spill. In an interview airing on Monday's PBS NewsHour by NPR's Joseph Shapiro, one of the blast's survivors details his frantic escape from the offshore rig. Watch an excerpt here.

EU Creates $1 Trillion Aid Package

With global markets increasingly on edge about the spreading debt crisis in Europe, finance ministers from across the continent have reached agreement on a near $1 trillion aid package to help protect the fragile global recovery and save the euro.