Wealth & Money Quote by Elena Kagan

Kagan’s praise is doing two jobs at once: sanctifying an institution and situating herself safely inside its lineage. The Solicitor General’s office is one of the few corners of Washington that still markets itself as a meritocracy with manners, a place where law is supposed to outrank politics even as it serves the government’s political branches. By calling it “the honor of a lifetime,” she signals humility, but also stakes out the role as a kind of civic priesthood: not just a job, a vocation.

The key move is the double emphasis on “extraordinary” skill and “extraordinary” professionalism and integrity. Skill alone is cheap in elite legal circles; everyone at that level can write and argue. The phrase “professionalism and integrity” is the credential that matters because it reassures multiple audiences at once: the Court that the SG’s office won’t sandbag it with partisan gamesmanship, the career lawyers that she respects the internal culture, and the broader public that the government’s advocate is not merely a political mouthpiece.

Her final line - “That is due, in large measure, to the people who have led it” - reads like gracious credit, but it’s also a strategic tether. She’s borrowing legitimacy from predecessors to preempt suspicion about her own agenda. In the post-Bush, post-unitary-executive debates of the era, “tradition” becomes a shield: an argument that continuity, not ideology, is the point. It’s institutional patriotism with a purpose, drafted in ceremonial language but aimed at maintaining trust in the government’s most visible legal voice.