In this image released by the White House, a Jan. 24, 1970, photo shows 9-year-old Elena Kagan, left, with her family. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's basic bio looks like this: raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Manhattan. Two brothers. Mother taught school. Dad was a lawyer. (AP Photo/The White House)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's basic bio looks like this: raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Manhattan. Two brothers. Mother taught school. Dad was a lawyer. Look closer, and you'll find a family tree richly populated with individuals of great determination, intelligence and activism. There's even a bona fide tree-hugger and a leftist dissident in the lot.
Supreme Court justices are as much biography as they are resume. And because Solicitor General Kagan never served as a judge, her early influences may help court-watchers fill in the blanks on her world view.
Tidbits from Kagan's youth prefigure her achievements. She was the first girl in her synagogue to have a bat mitzvah. In high school, she was president of student government and donned judge's robes for a picture of the group.
Her late mother, Gloria Kagan, came of age in an era when women had few professional options, and relished the idea of her daughter having a "high-powered professional career," Elena once said.
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