Smart Girls Were the Rule at Kagan's High School

New York

There were a lot of smart girls at Hunter College High School, but only one of them posed for the yearbook in a judge's robes, quoted a Supreme Court justice and is remembered for playing a tough attorney in an eighth-grade trial.

Now Elena Kagan is a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, and her classmates — including me — can't say they're all that surprised.

"In a school of overachievers, Elena shined brightly," said Leslie Hunter-Gadsden, a writer and teacher who took Latin with Elena for four years. "She was always very focused, the kind of person who I thought, 'She's going to run something someday. She's going to be...