Factbox: Kagan will face questions on host of issues

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Here are some of the key issues Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will likely be asked about at her Senate confirmation hearing, beginning on Monday:

Independence

Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans have pointedly questioned if Kagan, a member of the Obama administration the past year, would be free of White House influence if confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.

"It is my hope that the Obama administration doesn't think the ideal Supreme Court nominee is someone who would rubber stamp its policies," McConnell said in a Senate speech shortly after President Barack Obama nominated Kagan.

Kagan, 50, has served as Obama's solicitor general, a post in which she argues cases on behalf of the U.S. government before the Supreme Court.

Democrats note that other Supreme Court members have served in the administration of previous presidents, including Chief Justice John Roberts who worked in the Reagan administration.

Harvard military dispute

Expect more questions about Kagan's dealing with military recruiters after she became the first woman dean at Harvard law school in 2003.

Back then, she denounced the military's ban against gays serving openly in it ranks, and temporarily restricted access to her campus by military recruiters.

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and others deny complaints that she barred military recruiters.

"At no time did Dean Kagan ban the military from Harvard's campus," Leahy said in a recent Senate speech. "That is a plain fact that has been verified repeatedly by Harvard's veteran association and others."

Never a judge

Kagan could become the first person in 40 years who has never been a judge to become a member of the Supreme Court.

That troubles Republicans who argues that she lacks the experience needed to serve on the nation's highest court.

Democrat disagree and say it would be good to get someone outside the "judicial monastery" onto the nation's highest court.

The last two justices who had not been judges, William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell, joined the Supreme Court in 1972. Both have since been replaced by veteran judges.

Abortion

Abortion is always a hot-button issue at judicial confirmation hearings and promises to surface at Kagan's.

The National Right to Life Committee, which represents groups that oppose abortion in all 50 states, wrote senators last week in opposition to the nominee, who it sees as a proponent of abortion rights.

"Our conclusion is that Elena Kagan is first and foremost a social engineer, animated primarily by a desire to shape public policy on a host of issues," it wrote.

Solicitor General

Kagan will be quizzed about her work as Obama's U.S. solicitor general, a post dubbed the "10th justice" because of its close relationship with the Supreme Court.

She lost her most celebrated case, one that ended with a divided Supreme Court striking down campaign finance limits as unlawful.

Kagan sought to protect the limits, and Obama blasted the court for eliminating them. The president said the court had opened the floodgates to special interest money that could drown out the voices of the American public in politics.

There is legislation in Congress that seeks to blunt the impact of the ruling by requiring unprecedented disclosure in campaign advertising.

Justice Marshall

Republicans have raised concerns about Kagan clerkship more than two decades ago for Justice Thurgood Marshall. Papers she wrote then show her standing with Marshall and other liberals.

"Kagan's memos unambiguously express a leftist philosophy and an approach to the law that seems more concerned with achieving a desired social result than fairly following the Constitution," said Senator Jeff Session, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican.

During Kagan's 2009 confirmation hearing to become U.S. solicitor general, she addressed her clerkship for Marshall, who died in 1993.

"I was a 27-year-old pipsqueak, and I was working for an 80-year-old giant in the law and a person who, let us be frank, had very strong jurisprudential and legal views," Kagan said.

(Reporting by Thomas Ferraro and Jim Vicini; editing by David Alexander and Stacey Joyce)