So, we have a new pick from the Obama administration. This position is a vital one in any administration. I will follow this with interest.

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From http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2009/01/05/daily6.html

President-elect Barack Obama has selected a Harvard University dean as his nominee for solicitor general, Obama’s transition team announced Monday.

Elena Kagan, a current dean of Harvard Law School, is a former White House lawyer for Bill Clinton.

In the soliciator general’s job, she will serve as the president’s chief advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court. The job is seen as a stepping stone to the D.C. Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Obama is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
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As much as I dislike wikipedia I went there to get some background information for those who are interested.

Kagan was born in New York City. She graduated from Hunter College High School in 1977, received an A.B. from Princeton University in 1981, an M. Phil. from Worcester College, Oxford University, in 1983, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986. She was a law clerk for Judge Abner Mikva on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. In private practice, Kagan was an associate at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Williams & Connolly.

She launched her scholarly career at the University of Chicago Law School, where she became an assistant professor in 1991 and a tenured professor of law in 1995.

Kagan's scholarly work focuses on administrative law, including the role of the President of the United States in formulating and influencing federal administrative and regulatory law. Her 2001 Harvard Law Review article, "Presidential Administration," was honored as the year's top scholarly article by the American Bar Association's Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, and is being developed into a book to be published by Harvard University Press. Kagan has also written on a range of First Amendment issues.

From 1995 to 1999, Kagan served as Associate Counsel to U.S. President Bill Clinton and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

On June 17, 1999, President Clinton nominated Kagan to serve as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace James L. Buckley, who had taken senior status three years earlier. However, the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee declined to bring her nomination forward for a hearing. Kagan was one of two D.C. Circuit nominees whose nominations were not acted on before Clinton's term ended in January 2001; the other was Allen Snyder. In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated John G. Roberts to the seat to which Kagan had been nominated; Roberts was confirmed in 2003 but resigned from that seat in 2005 upon his confirmation as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The seat to which Kagan had been nominated currently is vacant.

Kagan has been dean of Harvard Law School since 2003 when she took over from Dean Robert C. Clark who had served as dean for over a decade. The focus of her tenure has been improving student satisfaction, constructing new facilities, and reviewing the legal curriculum. She has been credited for bringing new vigor to her post and for employing a consensus-building leadership style.

She also kicked off a $400 million capital campaign, "Setting the Standard," in 2003. It ended in 2008 with a record breaking $476 million raised, which was nearly 20 percent higher than the original goal. Kagan is also credited with overcoming ideological disputes among the Law School faculty that had hindered new faculty appointments.

On January 5, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama announced he would nominate Kagan to be the Solicitor-General in the next administration.