New Yorker. Solicitor General. Supreme Court Justice.
Elena Kagan's resume added a bold-faced top line today when the Senate confirmed her as the 112th Justice to sit on the highest court.
She grew up on the Upper West Side, and graduated from one of the Manhattan's elite public schools: Hunter College High School, where she'd been ambitiously pictured wearing judicial robes way back in her yearbook photo.
Her mother even taught at Hunter College Elementary School -- where one NBCNewYork reporter was a student.
The Senate vote was 63-to-37, with only a handful of Republicans crossing the aisle to vote in favor of President Obama's second nominee to the Supreme Court. Last year, another New York native, Sonia Sotomayor, was confirmed by a 69-31 margin.
The third woman on the highest court in the land, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is also from New York -- she born and raised in Brooklyn.
Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. are from both from New Jersey, and Scalia's family moved to Queens when he was 5 years old -- then he went to high school in Manhattan.
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For even more Empire State love, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. was born in Buffalo, but his family moved to Indiana when he was in elementary school.
New York's junior Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, was quick to praise the confirmation.
"I was proud to cast my vote for her confirmation to the Supreme Court," said Gillibrand. "Solicitor General Kagan’s historic achievements as the first woman to become Dean of Harvard Law School, and the first woman to serve as U.S. Solicitor General, demonstrate her level of excellence and strength of character."
Kagan isn't expected to alter the ideological balance of the court, where Stevens was considered a leader of the liberals.
Obama, traveling in Chicago, said her confirmation was an affirmation of her character and judicial temperament, and called the addition of another woman to the court a sign of progress for the country.
"Throughout her career she has earned the respect and admiration of folks from across the political spectrum, an achievement reflected in today's bipartisan vote," said the president.
Kagan will be sworn in as the 100th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on Saturday, August 7, at 2 p.m. at the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice Roberts, the court said in a statement.
