Elena Kagan lacks the common paper trail that leads to the Supreme Court, but she has left plenty of other tracks. William Saunders comments on her philosophy to enforce one’s ideal democratic law from the bench, rather than apply the current legislated law:

When presenting the Peter Gruber prize at Harvard Law School in 2006 to retired Israeli Supreme Court judge, Aharon Barak, she said that he “is my judicial hero. He is the judge who has best advanced democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and justice.” In 2006, Barak published a book detailing his judicial philosophy, The Role of a Judge in Democracy. As distinguished thinkers from Robert Bork to Richard Posner have noted, it is simply a handbook for judicial activism, in which the judge becomes a Platonic Guardian who makes all the tough decisions for society in accord with what he things are “human rights” and “justice.” This is simply “government by the judiciary,” and that is not part of our own Constitution.

Read Saunder’s extended critique here.