The photograph of Elena Kagan as a high school student wearing a judicial robe was quaint and prescient . It was also troubling. President Obama has nominated Solicitor General Kagan to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court. When Stevens was in high school, his classmates predicted that he would become a kindergarten teacher. Without taking away from Elena Kagan's impressive resume or adding too much to high school forecasts, this distinction is worth noting.
      If we could ever get past the misleading liberal vs. conservative labels for justices, we might appreciate Steven's most important characteristic as a justice. He views the lifetime appointment and the obligation to wear a robe as a job, not a calling or a majestic province to which he was somehow entitled. When as a corporate lawyer in Chicago he was first nominated to the federal judiciary in 1970, the Illinois senator who recommended him, Charles Percy, had a simple but politically radical rule -- anyone who wanted a judicial appointment would not be recommended. That rule helped Percy make historic strides in upgrading the stature of the federal bench in Illinois.
      Illinois had a federal judge who was liberal and smart -- just like Elena Kagan -- when he took his seat on the district court but who regarded his lifetime appointment as an entitlement. His name was Julius Hoffman, the judge who years later embarrassed the entire American judicial system by his conduct of the infamous Chicago Conspiracy Trial of 1969.
     Much of the optimism surrounding the nomination of Kegan centers on the hope that she will be a bridge builder and conciliator on the ideologically divided Court, like Stevens. Performing that crucial role requires a self-effacing, practical attitude toward the work and an ability to set aside  pomp and ceremony  -- just the skill set held by a talented kindergarten teacher facing a group of fractious children. We do not need a justice so covetous of a room in the Mable Palace that, once installed, he or she will believe that the biggest career goal has been accomplished. Stevens liked to say he was always learning on the job.
     American justice would be greatly improved if President Obama applied the Percy rule.