Elena Kagan v. Sonia Sotomayor: Who Wore It Better?

As I noted in my liveblogging of Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings, Solicitor General Kagan decided to wear the same outfit that then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor wore to day one of her confirmation hearings: an electric blue blazer over a black blouse. A reader who was also struck by this sartorial similarity sent us a photographic comparison. […]

By David Lat on June 28, 2010 10:41 pm

A reader who was also struck by this sartorial similarity sent us a photographic comparison. Check it out, and vote in our reader poll….

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By Above the Law

This is a great look for Kagan — as I noted in my liveblogging, she looked fantastic today — but one has to wonder why she didn’t opt for a more original look. Did White House staffers tell her to go with this outfit? Did Kagan superstitiously think to herself, “If it worked for Sotomayor, it will work for me?”

Or perhaps it was just a coincidence. The bright blue blazer over a black top is a very popular look among female lawyers and judges these days. Lawyer turned Fox News correspondent Megyn Kelly happened to wear the same outfit as Sonia Sotomayor on the first day of Sotomayor’s hearings, as we pointed out in these pages. When I did an event with Judge Diane Sykes at the University of Chicago Law School earlier this year, Judge Sykes also wore an electric blue blazer (as I noted on the podcast).

When Megyn Kelly and Sonia Sotomayor wound up in the same outfit last summer, we conducted a “Who wore it better?” reader poll. Kelly handily won, with 70 percent of the 7,000 votes cast. But it’s admittedly unfair to compare a Fox News television reporter, who looks hot for a living, with a distinguished federal judge, who makes her public appearances underneath a black robe.