Elena Kagan has kept her cards so close to the vest that in the days after President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court, some on the left worried she was too moderate to replace liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.
But in documents obtained by CBS News, Kagan--while working as a law clerk to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall - made her positions clear on some of the nation's most contentious social issues.
The documents, buried in Marshall's papers in the Library of Congress, show Kagan standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the liberal left, at a time when the Rehnquist Supreme Court was moving to the conservative right.
They also provide a remarkably candid picture of her opinions, including on the most controversial issue Supreme Court nominees ever confront: abortion.
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