Elena Kagan is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born and brought up in New York City, she was a free-spirited girl since childhood. Inspired by her attorney father, she took an early interest in law inspired and studied at Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard. She then clerked for Judge Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals and for Justice Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. In due course, she became a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. She then served in the Clinton Administration for four years, first as Associate Counsel to the President and then as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. After Clinton’s term ended, she returned to the academic world and eventually became the first female Dean of Harvard Law School. In 2009, President Obama nominated her as the first female Solicitor General of U.S. and after a year, he nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, to fill the position left vacant by the approaching retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. She took her seat in August 2010, followed by a formal investiture ceremony in October 2010.