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With the Obama administration and Senate Republicans gearing up for the fight over Elena Kagan's confirmation to the Supreme Court, news outlets and political columnists are working to define her public image:

The will lack the heft to challenge the Supreme Court's aggressive conservative wing. But its writers praise Obama for nominating an attorney with a background different from the eight other justices, who all ascended from federal appeals courts:

Whether by ambitious design or by habit of mind, Ms Kagan has spent decades carefully husbanding her thoughts and shielding her philosophy from view. Her lack of a clear record on certain issues makes it hard to know whether Mr Obama has nominated a full-throated counterweight to the court's increasingly aggressive conservative wing.

The White House undoubtedly hopes the ellipses in Ms Kagan's record will help her avoid a rocky confirmation hearing. That expedient approach, unfortunately, reflects the widespread sentiment that the right holds the upper hand in judicial debates, forcing the left to duck and cower.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wonders if Senate Republicans can resist their typical knee-jerk opposition, because he argues she is not the fierce liberal she'll be caricatured as:

The nomination poses a challenge to Senate Republicans to see whether they can recognize Obama's conciliatory gesture and move beyond reflexive opposition. Conservative interest groups have already begun to holler about how Kagan plans on "reshaping the court" with a "leftist legacy."

That's nonsense. True, Kagan comes from the liberal side. (Was anybody expecting Obama to nominate a member of the Federalist Society?) But she is certainly not the nominee liberal groups wanted. Though the interest groups, now noncommittal, have little choice but to fall in line, writers at liberal outfits have called her an "ideological cipher" (Mother Jones) and a "seemingly principle-free careerist" (Salon).

In the journal for a justice who had been educated in state schools, not the Ivy League like all the rest:

The justices of the Court have attended the best schools where they received top grades, have gotten ahead in a competitive profession, and have constantly been told how intelligent they are. They represent a law school culture in which the law is conceived in terms of logical arguments alloyed with good intentions. The everyday world of most Americans is thoroughly foreign to such a culture. And thus it is naïve to think that, given where they came from, the justices would disdain the opportunity to make the law -and even to make it up when they can.

, a native New Yorker, makes the Supreme Court a "sixth borough" of the city, after Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island:

If confirmed by the Senate, Elena Kagan - President Obama's choice to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens - would be the third native New Yorker now sitting on the high court, along with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. (Plus, Antonin Scalia grew up in Queens.)

So New Yorkers certainly have reason to be proud - though it's too soon to say whether Kagan deserves confirmation.

that even if Republicans have no hope of derailing the Kagan nomination, they still stand to gain politically from a bruising fight:

Republicans want to incite a national debate about the role of the judiciary, energizing their base ahead of November's midterm elections. Republicans plan to focus on Kagan's lack of judicial experience and her role in a 2003 controversy involving military recruiters on Harvard Law School's campus. And they're trying to paint her as someone more in tune with the workings of Washington insiders than with ordinary Americans.

And on the of Kagan's life and career.