Professor Richard Thomas Ford is quoted on potential U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's work as a dean at Harvard Law School. Danny Serna of the Yale Daily News reports:

For the past few years, Elena Kagan, former dean of Harvard Law School, and Harold Hongju Koh, former dean of Yale Law School, have led parallel lives.

Appointed to lead two top law schools only a year apart, they both left academia last year to take prominent posts in President Barack Obama’s administration — Kagan as solicitor general, Koh as legal adviser to the State Department.

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Kagan’s advantages as a nominee for the position seem to line up with what critics have identified as Koh’s problems. Richard Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School who got his law degree at Harvard and served as a fellow there before working at Stanford, said Kagan is widely perceived as a uniting figure who created consensus during her time as dean at Harvard. Her views, though liberal, do not seem to draw the ire of conservatives, Ford said.