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The New Republic called Elena Kagan a ''wonderwonk'' for her work on tobacco legislation in the Clinton administration. She was, the magazine said, ''a nerd who can talk tough.'' Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she served as a law clerk, called her, Ms. Kagan once wrote, ''to my face and I imagine also behind my back, 'Shorty.' '' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A bit of the fog is beginning to lift on the work and thinking of Elena Kagan, President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. An initial perusal of thousands of pages of documents from her years in the Clinton White House show her to be an adept centrist -- much like her old boss -- who tried to remain thoughtful while shielding President Bill Clinton from ideological extremes. It is hard to find anything in the 90,000-odd pages of papers released so far that shows whether Ms. Kagan will be an effective restraint on the Roberts Court's aggressive march to the right. She was, after all, a mid- to senior-level bureaucrat in the 1990s, working for a White House that could twist itself into knots trying to find the midpoint on every issue. Her job often required her to become a contortionist, searching for principled positions that would not inflame a newly Republican Congress or a generally conservative Supreme Court. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]