Politics & Power Quote by Elena Kagan

Kagan’s sentence performs a neat bit of institutional tightrope-walking: it praises the Supreme Court as guardian and then quietly warns it not to get drunk on that praise. The opening clause flatters the Court’s noblest self-image - referee of constitutional boundaries, shield for individual rights. That’s the part everyone applauds because it frames judicial power as duty, not ambition. Then the pivot lands: “But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself.” The subtext is that the most dangerous overreach can come from the branch designed to prevent overreach.

“Respect the choices made by the American people” is the line doing the most political work. It’s not a populist swipe at judges; it’s a signal of judicial modesty and democratic legitimacy. Kagan is threading a needle between two anxieties: one, that elected officials will trample rights; two, that unelected justices will substitute their own moral or policy preferences for those of voters and legislatures. The phrase “proper bounds” echoes the conservative vocabulary of restraint, while “rights of individuals” nods to liberal constitutional commitments. She’s speaking in a bilingual judicial dialect.

Context matters: Kagan arrived at the Court after bruising national fights over “activist judges,” with the post-2000 Court increasingly seen as a political actor. This kind of rhetoric anticipates confirmation-hearing scrutiny and, more broadly, defends the Court’s legitimacy by presenting it as powerful but self-policing. It’s persuasion aimed as much at the public as at colleagues: trust us, and also, watch us.