Kagan was a law clerk for Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1987 and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. She later entered private practice as an associate at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Williams & Connolly.[1]
Kagan joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School as an assistant professor in 1991 and became a tenured professor of law in 1995.[11] While at Chicago, she published "Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V.," a law review article on the regulation of First Amendment hate speech in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul; "Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine," an article discussing the significance of governmental motive in regulating speech; and, "Confirmation Messes, Old and New," a review of a book by Stephen L. Carter discussing the judicial confirmation process.
According to her colleagues, Kagan's students raved about and admired Kagan from the beginning, and was granted tenure "despite the reservations of some colleagues who thought she had not published enough.