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.

On May 9, 2010, MSNBC and CNN reported that President Obama had chosen Kagan as his nominee to succeed Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. If confirmed, Kagan would be the first justice in nearly four decades without any prior experience as a judge.[40][41] The last justice confirmed without prior experience as a judge was William Rehnquist in 1972.[42]

Elena Kagan (pronounced /ˈkeɪɡən/; born April 28, 1960)[1] is President Barack Obama's nominee to become the 112th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Kagan currently serves as Solicitor General of the United States. She is the first woman to hold the office of Solicitor General, having been nominated by President Obama on January 26, 2009, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 19, 2009. Kagan was formerly dean of Harvard Law School and Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law at Harvard University. She had also been a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, Kagan served as Associate White House Counsel.
On May 10, 2010, President Obama nominated Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, filling the vacancy created by the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens at the end of the Supreme Court's 2009–2010 term.[2][3] If confirmed, she would become the fourth female justice in the Supreme Court's history, and the third on the current bench. She would also become the eighth Jewish justice in the Supreme Court's history, and the third on the current bench.