title: Carlos Slim

text: In 1982, the Mexican economy contracted rapidly. As many banks were struggling and foreign investors were cutting back on investing and scurrying, Slim began investing heavily and acquired many Mexican flagship businesses at depressed valuations. Much of Slim's business dealings involved a simple strategy, which entails buying a business and retaining it for its cash flow, or eventually selling the stake at a greater profit in future, thereby netting the capital gains as well as reinvesting the initial principal into a new business. In addition, Grupo Carso's corporate conglomerate structure allows Slim to purchase numerous stakes across a wide range of industries, thereby making the overall conglomerate nearly recession-proof in the event that one or more industry sectors of the Mexican economy do not fare well.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Amidst the Mexican economic downturn before its recovery in 1985, Slim invested heavily by snapping up numerous Mexican flagship companies for pennies on the dollar. He purchased all or a sizeable percentage of numerous Mexican businesses at significant discounts, including Empresas Frisco, a mining concessionary and chemical maker, Industrias Nacobre, a copper manufacturer, Reynolds Aluminio, a Mexican aluminum concern, Compañía Hulera Euzkadi (Mexico's largest tire maker), and Bimex hotels, a hotel chain. He also became the majority shareholder of Sanborn Hermanos, a prominent Mexican food retailer, gift shop and restaurant chain. Slim spent to acquire the Mexican insurance agency Seguros de México in 1984, and later subsumed the company into the firm, Seguros Inbursa. The value of his stake in Seguros eventually became worth by 2007, after four spinoffs. He also acquired a 40% and 50% interest in the Mexican arms of British American Tobacco and The Hershey Company, respectively. He acquired large blocks of Denny's and Firestone Tires. From Seguros de México, Fianzas La Guardiana and Casa de Bolsa Inbursa, he formed the Grupo Financiero Inbursa, a financial services provider. Many of these corporate acquisitions were financed by the revenues and cash flows from Cigatam, a tobacco distributor which he purchased early in during the early 1980s Mexican economic downturn.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 1988, Slim bought Nacobre, a copper manufacturing company that manufactures, markets and distributes copper and copper alloy products, along with a chemical company, Química Fluor.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Slim earned windfall profits in the early 1990s when Mexican government began privatizing its telecom industry. With his conglomerate Grupo Carso, he acquired Telmex, a landline telephone operator from the Mexican government. In 1990, Grupo Carso was floated as a public company initially in Mexico and then worldwide. Grupo Carso also acquired majority ownership of Porcelanite, a tile making company in 1990.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Later in 1990, Slim acted in concert with France Télécom and Southwestern Bell Corporation to purchase the landline telecommunications operator Telmex from the Mexican government, when Mexico began privatizing its national industries. Slim was an early investment backer in Telmex, as the cash flows and revenues of the company eventually formed the bulk of his private fortune. By 2006, Telmex controlled and operated 90 percent of the telephone lines in Mexico, and his wireless telecommunications company, Telcel, which was created out of the Radiomóvil Dipsa company, operated almost 80 percent of all the country's cellphones.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 1991, he acquired Hoteles Calinda (now OSTAR Grupo Hotelero), a hotel chain and in 1993, he increased his stakes in General Tire, an American tiremaker and a distributor of aluminum profiles and aluminum concern Grupo Aluminio to the point where he had a majority interest in the company.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 1996, Slim's conglomerate company Grupo Carso was split into three separate companies: Carso Global Telecom, Grupo Carso, and Invercorporación. In the following year, Slim bought the Mexican arm of Sears Roebuck.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 1999, Slim began expanding his business interests beyond Latin America. Though the bulk of his holdings remained in Mexico, he began targeting the United States for foreign investments.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Slim made headlines within the American business scene in 2003 when he began purchasing large stakes in a number of major US retailers such as Barnes & Noble, OfficeMax, Office Depot, Circuit City, Borders, and CompUSA. Much of the rationale behind Slim's international commercial expansion beyond Mexico was due to a running joke in Mexican business circles where "there was nothing left to acquire in Mexico." He set up Telmex USA branch and also acquired a stake in Tracfone, an American cellular telephone operator. Concurrently, Slim established Carso Infraestructura y Construcción, S. A. (CICSA) as a non-profit construction and engineering firm within Grupo Carso. During the same year, Slim underwent heart surgery and subsequently passed on much of his day-to-day corporate involvement to his children and their spouses.


title: Carlos Slim

text: América Telecom, the holding company for América Móvil, was incorporated in 2000. Concurrently, Telmex also spun off its international celluar phone division for a $15 billion listing of America Movil SA on the New York Stock Exchange. Telmex has taken numerous stakes of various international cellular telephone operators outside of Mexico, including the Brazilian ATL and Telecom Americas concerns, Techtel in Argentina, and others in Guatemala and Ecuador. In subsequent years, the company made further investments across Latin America, with companies in Colombia, Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador, well as a joint venture with the American software house, Microsoft called Tlmsn, a Spanish-language web portal.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 2005 Slim invested in Volaris, a Mexican airline and established Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo en América Latina SAB de CV (using the acronym "IDEAL"—roughly translated as "Promoter of Development and Employment in Latin America"), a Mexican construction and civil engineering company primarily engaged in not-for-profit infrastructure development. Since 2006, IDEAL won three infrastructure contracts yet it faces stiff competition from a number of other Mexican and Spanish construction companies.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 2007, after having amassed a 50.1% stake in the Cigatam tobacco manufacturer, Slim sold a large portion of his equity to Philip Morris for US$1.1billion. Also 2007, Slim sold his entire stake of tile-maker Porcelanite for US$800million. He licensed the Saks name and opened the Mexican arm of Saks Fifth Avenue retailer in Santa Fe, Mexico. During the same year, the estimated value of all of Slim's companies was at US$150billion. On December 8, 2007, Grupo Carso announced that the remaining 103 CompUSA retail stores would be either liquidated or sold, bringing an end to the struggling company, although the information technology division of CompUSA continued under the name Telvista with various U.S. locations in Dallas, Texas (U.S. Corporate Office) and Danville, Virginia. Telvista has five centers in Mexico (three in Tijuana, one center in Mexicali, and one in México City). After 28 years of corporate involvement, Slim became the Honorary Lifetime Chairman of the business.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 2008, Slim took a 6.4% stake valued at $27 million in the New York Times Company, a prominent American newspaper publisher. Slim increased his stake to 8% by 2012. Slim's stake in the Times increased again to 16.8% of the company's Class A shares on 20 January 2015 when he exercised stock options to purchase 15.9 million shares, making him the largest shareholder in the company. The New York Times Company's Class A shares are available for purchase by the public and offer less control over the company than Class B shares, which are privately held. According to the company's 2016 annual filings, Slim owned 17.4% of the company's Class A shares, and none of the company's Class B shares.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 2012, Slim sold the broadcast rights for the Leon games to the American terrestrial television network, Telemundo, and the cable channel Fox Sports in Mexico and the rest of Latin America and to the website mediotiempo.com. The games are also broadcast on the Internet through UNO TV, offered by Telmex. Slim has been involved with broadcasting sports outside Mexico to larger markets such as the United States. In March 2012, América Móvil acquired the broadcast rights for the Olympic Games in Sochi 2014 and the Brazil 2016 for Latin America.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In March 2012, Slim, along with American television host Larry King, established Ora TV, an on-demand digital television network that produces and distributes television shows including "Larry King Now", "Politicking with Larry King", "Recessionista, and Jesse Ventura Uncensored".


title: Carlos Slim

text: In September 2012, Slim bought 30% stakes in Pachuca and León, two Mexican soccer teams through his telecommunications company America Movil. In December 2012, he bought all the shares of the second division team Estudiantes Tecos. Slim has also completed business deals for the television rights to games of the Leon soccer team. His company America Movil purchased 30 percent of the team along with transmission rights as Slim doesn't have the rights to transmit content by broadcast television or cable TV as well as putting him in competition with Televisa and TV Azteca, two television companies with rights to the rest of Mexican soccer's first division.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In July 2013, Slim's company America Movil invested US$40million in Shazam, a British commercial mobile phone-based music identification service for an undisclosed share of ownership. America Movil partnered with the company to aid its growth into advertising and television and help the audio recognition service expand in Latin America.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In November 2013, Slim invested US$60 million in the Israeli startup Mobli, a company that deals with connections between people and communities corralled according to different interests.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In December 2013, Slim's private equity fund, Sinca Inbursa, sold its stake in the Mexican pharmaceutical company Landsteiner Scientific. Slim had acquired a 27.51% stake in the company in June 2008, which represented 6.6% of Sinca's investment portfolio. The private equity fund's investments are mainly concentrated in the transportation and infrastructure sectors and the fund garnered a total market cap of 5.152 billion pesos at the end of 2012.


title: Carlos Slim

text: On 23 April 2014, Slim took control of Telekom Austria, Austria's largest telecommunications company, which operates telcos in countries such as Bulgaria, Croatia and Belarus, under a 10-year agreement. It was Slim's first successful business acquisition in Europe. In a syndicate holding structure the Austrian state holding company OIAG's 28% are combined with Slim's 27% ownership. America Movil will spend as much as to buy out minority shareholders in a mandatory public offer and invest up to 1billion euros () into the company, which it sees as "platform for expansion into central and eastern Europe". Labor representatives boycotted attending the OIAG supervisory board meeting for 12 hours criticizing lack of explicit job guarantees.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In January 2015, Grupo Carso publicly launched Claro Musica, an online music service that is a Latin American equivalent of iTunes and Spotify. Slim, along with his son, increased their corporate presence in Mexico's music industry, particularly in the retail music sector since 2013. Sanborn's, the Mexican retail department store chain owned by Slim controls a majority stake in Mixup, Mexico's most successful retail music store that comprises a chain 117-store Mexican retailers Mixup also generated more than in revenue in 2014.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In March 2015, Slim made his presence known in the Spanish business scene by buying stakes in various troubled Spanish companies while perusing potential acquisitions across Europe. Slim's investment company, Inmobiliaria Carso, announced it will buy a stake in the Spanish bank, Bankia, which couples with Slim's other purchase of Realia, a Spanish real estate company, where Slim is the second largest shareholder holding a 25% equity stake, behind Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas, a Spanish construction company where Slim is also an active minor shareholder.


title: Carlos Slim

text: On April 15, 2015, Slim formed oil company Carso Oil & Gas. A report that was released by the new company listed its assets at 3.5billion pesos (approximately ), placed within 17.7million shares. Upon formation of the company, Slim remained sanguine about the company's future potential and Mexico's burgeoning energy sector where the state monopoly ceased to exist.


title: Carlos Slim

text: On July 25, 2015, Slim's investment group "Control Empresarial de Capitales" invested in IMatchative, a technology startup that ranks the world's hedge funds creating in-depth behavioral profiles and business analytics. Limited partners pay per subscription while hedge fund managers pay half the price and also sign up for a free version of the products the company offers.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Slim's father, Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz, was born on 17 July 1888 in Jezzine, Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Empire). In 1902, at the age of 14, Haddad emigrated to Mexico alone, and later changed his name to Julián Slim Haddad. It was not uncommon for Lebanese children to be sent abroad before they reached the age of 15 to avoid being conscripted into the Ottoman Army, and four of Haddad's older brothers were already living in Mexico at the time of his arrival.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 1911, Julián established a dry goods retail store, La Estrella de Oriente (The Star of the Orient). By 1921, he had begun investing in real estate in the flourishing commercial district of Mexico City where Julián acquired prime Mexican real estate at fire sale prices and in the Zocalo District during the 1910–17 Mexican Revolution. By 1922, Julián's net worth reached $1,012,258 pesos, diversified among various assets including real estate, privately-controlled businesses and stocks.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In August 1926, Julián Slim married Linda Helú Atta. Linda, of Lebanese ancestry, was born in Parral, Chihuahua. Her parents had immigrated to Mexico from Lebanon in the late 19th century. Upon immigrating to Mexico, her parents founded one of the first Arabic-language magazines for the Lebanese-Mexican community, using a printing press they had brought with them. Julian and Linda had six children: Nour, Alma, Julián, José, Carlos, and Linda. Julián senior died in 1953, when Carlos was 13 years old.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Julian's major successful business ventures and investment undertakings became the source of considerable wealth for himself and his family. As a prominent businessman and wealthy investor who remained a reputable pillar within the Lebanese Mexican community, Julian was known for his business acumen and his knack when making investments during bad economic cycles (which occurred frequently in Mexico). Julián was known for his business savvy, strong work ethic, and commitment to traditional Lebanese moral values.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In February 2011, Julian, the oldest brother of Carlos, died aged 74. He was an active businessman and worked in one of Mexico's top intelligence agencies.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Carlos Slim was married to Soumaya Domit from 1967 until her death in 1999. Among her interests were various philanthropic projects. Slim has six children: Carlos, Marco Antonio, Patrick, Soumaya, Vanessa, and Johanna. His three older sons serve in key positions in the companies controlled by Slim where most are involved in the day-to-day running of Slim's business empire. Slim underwent heart surgery in 1999. In high school, Slim's favorite subjects were history, cosmography, and mathematics. Slim and his wife had a very happy marriage, and he indicated that he does not intend to remarry.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In his office, Slim does not have a computer, and instead keeps all his financial data in hand-written notebooks. Due to the vast size of his business empire, he often jokes that he cannot keep track of all the companies he manages. Slim is a Maronite Catholic, and he is one of the prominent backers of Legion of Christ, a Roman Catholic religious institute.


title: Carlos Slim

text: On 29 March 2007, Slim surpassed American investor Warren Buffett as the world's second richest person with an estimated net worth of compared with Buffett's .


title: Carlos Slim

text: On 4 August 2007, "The Wall Street Journal" ran a cover story profiling Slim. The article said, "While the market value of his stake in publicly traded companies could decline at any time, at the moment he is probably wealthier than Bill Gates". According to "The Wall Street Journal", Slim credits part of his ability to "discover investment opportunities" early to the writings of his friend, futurist author Alvin Toffler.


title: Carlos Slim

text: On 8 August 2007, "Fortune" magazine reported that Slim had overtaken Gates as the world's richest person. Slim's estimated fortune soared to , based on the value of his public holdings at the end of July. Gates' net worth was estimated to be at least .


title: Carlos Slim

text: On 5 March 2008, "Forbes" ranked Slim as the world's second-richest person, behind Warren Buffett and ahead of Bill Gates.


title: Carlos Slim

text: On 11 March 2009, "Forbes" ranked Slim as the world's third-richest person, behind Gates and Buffett and ahead of Larry Ellison.


title: Carlos Slim

text: On 10 March 2010, "Forbes" once again reported that Slim had overtaken Gates as the world's richest person, with a net worth of . At the time, Gates and Buffett had a net worth of and respectively. He was the first Mexican to top the list. It was the first time in 16 years that the person on top of the list was not from the United States. It was also the first time the person at the top of the list was from an emerging economy. Between 2008 and 2010, Slim more than doubled his net worth from $35 to $75 billion.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In March 2011, "Forbes" stated that Slim had maintained his position as the wealthiest person in the world, with his fortune estimated at .


title: Carlos Slim

text: In December 2012, according to the "Bloomberg Billionaires Index", Carlos Slim Helú remained the world's richest person with an estimated net worth of .


title: Carlos Slim

text: On 5 March 2013, "Forbes" stated that Slim was still maintaining his first-place position as the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of . On 16 May 2013, Bloomberg L.P. ranked Slim the second-richest person in the world, after Bill Gates.


title: Carlos Slim

text: On July 15 2014, "Forbes" announced that Slim had reclaimed the position of the wealthiest person in the world, with a fortune of .


title: Carlos Slim

text: In September 2014, "Forbes" listed Slim as number 1 on its list of billionaires with a net worth of .


title: Carlos Slim

text: Slim is an active real estate investor. His real estate holding company, Inmobiliaria Carso has developed, invested, owned and operated many residential and commercial real estate properties across Mexico since the 1960s. His real estate company constructured Plaza Carso in Mexico City, where most of his business ventures share a common headquarters address. Since the early 2000s to the mid-2010s, Slim has been making private real estate investments internationally beyond Mexico, particularly in Spain and the United States.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In May 2014, Slim opened Inbursa Aquarium, Latin America's largest aquarium. Slim owns the Duke Seamans mansion, a 1901 beaux arts house on 5th Avenue in New York City, which he bought for $44 million in 2010. The mansion is 20,000 square feet and has 12 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, and a doctor's office in the basement. In May 2015, he listed the property for sale at $80 million, nearly twice what he had paid. In April 2015, Slim bought the Marquette Building in Detroit and purchased PepsiCo Americas Beverages headquarters in Somers, New York, for . Slim owns a second mansion in New York City at 10 West 56th Street, which he bought in 2011 for .


title: Carlos Slim

text: In March 2015, Slim began examining Spain as a potential investment destination, by purchasing cheap properties in Spain's real estate sector at rock-bottom prices in its ailing economy.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Slim's growing wealth has been a subject of controversy, because it has been amassed in a developing country where average per capita income does not surpass a year, and nearly 17% of the population lives in poverty. Critics claim that Slim is a monopolist, pointing to Telmex's control of 90% of the Mexican landline telephone market. Slim's wealth is the equivalent of roughly 5% of Mexico's annual economic output. Telmex, of which 49.1% is owned by Slim and his family, charges among the highest usage fees in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.


title: Carlos Slim

text: According to Celso Garrido, economist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Slim's domination of Mexico's conglomerates prevents the growth of smaller companies, resulting in a shortage of paying jobs, forcing many Mexicans to seek better lives in the U.S.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Slim was criticized by the Dutch minister of economic affairs, Henk Kamp, in 2013 for attempting to expand his telecommunications empire beyond the Americas by América Móvil's buy-out offer to KPN, a Dutch landline and mobile telecommunications operator. Kamp reiterated his criticisms of Slim stating: "an acquisition of KPN by a 'foreign company' could have consequences for the Netherlands' national security". Two years after Slim's failed bid to take over the company, mainly due to political intervention and Slim's paucity of interest in purchasing the company, Slim's America Movil SAB began offering 2.25billion euros. America Movil now controls a 21.1 percent stake of KPN with a market value of 3.1billion euros as of 20 May 2015. Slim has been slowly decreasing his holdings since he was forced to withdraw a 7.2-billion-euro bid for the Dutch phone line carrier in 2013 after negotiations collapsed.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In response to the criticism, Slim has stated, "When you live for others' opinions, you are dead. I don't want to live thinking about how I'll be remembered [by Mexican people]," claiming indifference about his position on Forbes list of the world's richest people. He has said he has no interest in becoming the world's richest person. When asked to explain his sudden increase in wealth at a press conference soon after Forbes annual rankings were published, he said, "The stock market goes up ... and down", and noted that his fortune could quickly drop.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 2016, then Presidential candidate and eventual 45th President of the United States Donald Trump accused Slim of being involved in editorial articles critical of him published in "The New York Times" during his 2016 Presidential campaign. The Times responded to these accusations by saying that Slim had never interfered in editorial policy.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Slim has been publicly skeptical of The Giving Pledge by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett giving away at least half of their fortunes. But—according to his spokesman—he devoted , or roughly 5%, to his Carlos Slim foundation as of 2011. Though Slim has not gone as far as Gates and Buffett in pledging more than half of his fortune, Slim has expressed firm support for philanthropy and has advised budding entrepreneurs that businessmen must do more than givethey "should participate in solving problems".


title: Carlos Slim

text: Established in 1986, "" sponsors the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, named after Slim's late wife, Soumaya Domit, opened 2011. It holds 66,000 pieces, including religious relics, contains the world's second-largest collection of Rodin sculptures, including "The Kiss", the largest Salvador Dalí collection in Latin America, works by Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and coins from the viceroys of Spain. The inauguration in 2011 was attended by the President of Mexico, Nobel Prize laureates, writers and other celebrities.


title: Carlos Slim

text: After stating that he had donated of dividends to "Fundación Carlos Slim", in 2006, and another in 2010, Slim was ranked fifth in Forbes' World's Biggest Givers in May 2011. Education and health care projects have included $100 million to perform 50,000 cataract surgeries in Peru.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 1995, Slim established "Fundación Telmex", a broad-ranging philanthropic foundation, which as he announced in 2007 had been provided with an asset base of to establish "Carso Institutes for Health, Sports and Education". Furthermore, it was to work in support of an initiative of Bill Clinton to aid the people of Latin America. The foundation has organized Copa Telmex, an amateur sports tournament, recognized in 2007 and 2008 by Guinness World Records as having the most participants of any such tournament in the world. Together with Fundación Carlos Slim Helú, Telmex announced in 2008 that it was to invest more than in Mexican sports programs, from grass-roots level to Olympic standard. Telmex sponsored the Sauber F1 team for the 2011 season.


title: Carlos Slim

text: Slim has been Chair of the Council for the Restoration of the Historic Downtown of Mexico City since 2001.


title: Carlos Slim

text: In 2011, he, along with the president of Mexico, Mexico City mayor, and Mexico City archbishop, inaugurated the first phase of Plaza Mariana close to Basilica de Guadalupe. The complex, whose construction was funded by Slim, includes an evangelization center, museum, columbarium, health center, and market.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Elena Kagan ( ; born April 28, 1960) is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10, 2010, and has served since August 7, 2010. Kagan is the fourth woman to become a member of the Court.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from Princeton University, Worcester College, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, she clerked for a federal Court of Appeals judge and for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel, and later as a policy adviser under President Bill Clinton. After a nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which expired without action, she became a professor at Harvard Law School and was later named its first female dean.


title: Elena Kagan

text: In 2009, Kagan became the first female solicitor general of the United States. President Obama later nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy arising from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. The United States Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 63–37. As of 2022, she is the most recent justice appointed without any prior judicial experience. She is considered part of the Court's liberal wing but tends to be one of the more moderate justices of that group. She wrote the majority opinion in "Cooper v. Harris", a landmark case restricting the permissible uses of race in drawing congressional districts.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan was born on April 28, 1960, in Manhattan, the second of three children of Robert Kagan, an attorney who represented tenants trying to remain in their homes, and Gloria (Gittelman) Kagan, who taught at Hunter College Elementary School. Both her parents were the children of Russian Jewish immigrants. Kagan has two brothers, Marc and Irving.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan and her family lived in a third-floor apartment at West End Avenue and 75th Street, and attended Lincoln Square Synagogue. She was independent and strong-willed in her youth and, according to a former law partner of her father's, clashed with her Orthodox rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, over aspects of her bat mitzvah. "She had strong opinions about what a bat mitzvah should be like, which didn't parallel the wishes of the rabbi," her father's colleague said. Kagan and Riskin negotiated a solution. Riskin had never performed a ritual bat mitzvah before. She "felt very strongly that there should be ritual bat mitzvah in the synagogue, no less important than the ritual bar mitzvah. This was really the first formal bat mitzvah we had", he said. Kagan asked to read from the Torah on a Saturday morning as the boys did, but ultimately read from the Book of Ruth on a Friday night. She now practices Conservative Judaism.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan's childhood friend Margaret Raymond recalled that she was a teenage smoker but not a partier. On Saturday nights, Raymond and Kagan were "more apt to sit on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and talk." Kagan also loved literature and reread Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" every year. In her 1977 Hunter College High School yearbook, she is pictured in a judge's robe and holding a gavel. Next to the photo is a quotation from former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter: "Government is itself an art, one of the subtlest of arts."


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan attended Hunter College High School, where her mother taught. The school had a reputation as one of the most elite learning institutions for high school girls and attracted students from all over New York City. Kagan emerged as one of the school's more outstanding students. She was elected president of the student government and served on a student-faculty consultative committee. Kagan then attended Princeton University, graduating in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts "summa cum laude" in history. She was particularly drawn to American history and archival research. She wrote a senior thesis under historian Sean Wilentz titled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900–1933". In it she wrote, "Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America." Wilentz says Kagan did not mean to defend socialism, noting that she "was interested in it. To study something is not to endorse it."


title: Elena Kagan

text: As an undergraduate, Kagan also served as editorial chair of "The Daily Princetonian". Along with eight other students, she penned a "Declaration of the Campaign for a Democratic University". It called for "a fundamental restructuring of university governance" and condemned Princeton's administration for making decisions "behind closed doors". Despite the liberal tone of "The Daily Princetonian"s editorials, Kagan was politically restrained in her dealings with fellow reporters. Her "Daily Princetonian" colleague Steven Bernstein has said he "cannot recall a time in which Kagan expressed her political views". He described Kagan's political stances as "sort of liberal, democratic, progressive tradition, and everything with lower case".


title: Elena Kagan

text: In 1980, Kagan received Princeton's Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship, one of the highest general awards the university confers. This enabled her to study at Worcester College, Oxford. As part of her graduation requirement, Kagan wrote a thesis called "The Development and Erosion of the American Exclusionary Rule: A Study in Judicial Method". It presented a critical look at the exclusionary rule and its evolution on the Supreme Court—in particular the Warren Court. She earned a Master of Philosophy in Politics at Oxford in 1983.


title: Elena Kagan

text: In 1983, at age 23, Kagan entered Harvard Law School. Her adjustment to Harvard's atmosphere was rocky; she received the worst grades of her entire law school career in her first semester. Kagan went on to earn an A in 17 of the 21 courses she took at Harvard, and was a supervisory editor of the "Harvard Law Review". She worked as a summer associate at the Wall Street law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where she worked in the litigation department. She graduated in 1986 with a Juris Doctor "magna cum laude". Her friend Jeffrey Toobin recalls that Kagan "stood out from the start as one with a formidable mind. She's good with people. At the time, the law school was a politically charged and divided place. She navigated the factions with ease, and won the respect of everyone."


title: Elena Kagan

text: After law school, Kagan was a law clerk for judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1987 to 1988. She became one of Mikva's favorite clerks; he called her "the pick of the litter". From 1988 to 1989, Kagan clerked for justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall said he hired Kagan to help him put the "spark" back into his opinions as the Court had been undergoing a conservative shift since William Rehnquist became Chief Justice in 1986. Marshall nicknamed the Kagan "Shorty".


title: Elena Kagan

text: From 1989 to 1991, Kagan was in private practice at the Washington, D.C. law firm Williams & Connolly. As a junior associate, she drafted briefs and conducted discovery. During her short time at the firm, she handled five lawsuits that involved First Amendment or media law issues and libel issues.


title: Elena Kagan

text: In 1991, Kagan became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School. While there she first met Barack Obama, a guest lecturer at the school. While on the UC faculty, Kagan published a law review article on the regulation of First Amendment hate speech in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in "R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul"; an article discussing the significance of governmental motive in regulating speech; and a review of a book by Stephen L. Carter discussing the judicial confirmation process. In the first article, which became highly influential, Kagan argued that the Supreme Court should examine governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases and analyzed historic draft-card burning and flag burning cases in light of free speech arguments.


title: Elena Kagan

text: In 1993, Senator Joe Biden appointed Kagan as a special counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. During this time, she worked on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan became a tenured professor of law in 1995. According to her colleagues, Kagan's students complimented and admired her from the beginning, and she was granted tenure "despite the reservations of some colleagues who thought she had not published enough".


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan served as Associate White House Counsel for Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1996, when Mikva served as White House Counsel. She worked on such issues affecting the Clinton administration as the Whitewater controversy, the White House travel office controversy, and "Clinton v. Jones". From 1997 to 1999, she worked as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. Kagan worked on topics like budget appropriations, campaign finance reform, and social welfare issues. Her work is catalogued in the Clinton Library. Kagan coauthored a 1997 memo urging Clinton to support a ban on late-term abortions: "We recommend that you endorse the Daschle amendment in order to sustain your credibility on HR 1122 and prevent Congress from overriding your veto."


title: Elena Kagan

text: On June 17, 1999, Clinton nominated Kagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace James L. Buckley, who took senior status in 1996. The Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican Chairman, Orrin Hatch, scheduled no hearing, effectively ending her nomination. When the Senate term ended, her nomination lapsed, as did that of fellow Clinton nominee Allen Snyder.


title: Elena Kagan

text: After her service in the White House and her lapsed judicial nomination, Kagan returned to academia in 1999. She initially sought to return to the University of Chicago, but she had given up her tenured position during her extended stint in the Clinton Administration, and the school chose not to rehire her, reportedly due to doubts about her commitment to academia. Kagan quickly found a position as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. While there, she authored a law review article on United States administrative law, focusing on the president's role in formulating and influencing federal administrative law. The article was honored as the year's top scholarly article by the American Bar Association's Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.


title: Elena Kagan

text: In 2001, Kagan was named a full professor at Harvard Law School and in 2003 she was named dean of the Law School by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers. She succeeded Robert C. Clark, who had served as dean for over a decade. The focus of her tenure was on improving student satisfaction. Efforts included constructing new facilities and reforming the first-year curriculum as well as aesthetic changes and creature comforts, such as free morning coffee. She has been credited for a consensus-building leadership style that defused the school's previous ideological discord.


title: Elena Kagan

text: As dean, Kagan inherited a capital campaign, "Setting the Standard," in 2003. It ended in 2008 with a record-breaking raised, 19% more than the original goal. Kagan made a number of prominent new hires, increasing the size of the faculty considerably. Her coups included hiring legal scholar Cass Sunstein away from the University of Chicago and Lawrence Lessig away from Stanford. She also made an effort to hire conservative scholars, such as former Bush administration official Jack Goldsmith, for the traditionally liberal-leaning faculty.


title: Elena Kagan

text: According to Kevin Washburn, then dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law, Kagan transformed Harvard Law School from a harsh environment for students to one that was much more student-focused.


title: Elena Kagan

text: During her deanship, Kagan upheld a decades-old policy barring military recruiters from the Office of Career Services because she felt the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy discriminated against gays and lesbians. According to Campus Progress,


title: Elena Kagan

text: In October 2003, Kagan sent an email to students and faculty deploring that military recruiters had shown up on campus in violation of this policy. The email read in part, "This action causes me deep distress. I abhor the military's discriminatory recruitment policy". She also wrote that it was "a profound wrong—a moral injustice of the first order".


title: Elena Kagan

text: From 2005 to 2008, Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute. She received a $10,000 stipend for her service.


title: Elena Kagan

text: By early 2007, Kagan was a finalist for the presidency of Harvard University after Lawrence Summers's resignation the previous year. The position ultimately went to Drew Gilpin Faust instead. Kagan was reportedly disappointed, and law school students threw her a party to express their appreciation for her leadership.


title: Elena Kagan

text: On January 5, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama announced he would nominate Kagan to be Solicitor General. She was vetted for the position of Deputy Attorney General before her selection as Solicitor General. At the time of her nomination, Kagan had never argued a case before any court. At least two previous solicitors general, Robert Bork and Kenneth Starr, had no previous Supreme Court appearances.


title: Elena Kagan

text: The two main questions senators had for Kagan during her confirmation hearings were whether she would defend statutes that she personally opposed and whether she was qualified to be solicitor general given her lack of courtroom experience. Kagan testified that she would defend laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, pursuant to which states were not required to recognize same-sex marriages originating in other states, "if there is any reasonable basis to do so". The Senate confirmed her on March 19, 2009, by a vote of 61 to 31. She was the first woman to hold the position. Upon taking office, Kagan pledged to defend any statute as long as there was a colorable argument to be made, regardless of her personal opinions. As Solicitor General, Kagan's job was to act as the lawyer for the United States and defend legislation and executive actions in appeals before the Supreme Court. Thus the arguments she made as Solicitor General were not necessarily indicative of her personal beliefs.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan's first appearance before the Supreme Court was on September 9, 2009, one month before the typical start of a new term in October, in the re-argument of "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission", . During argument, she asked the Court to uphold a 1990 precedent that allowed the government to restrict corporations' use of their treasuries to campaign for or against political candidates. As an alternative argument, Kagan further contended that if the Court would not uphold precedent, it should keep its ruling narrowly focused on corporations that resembled the petitioning organization, Citizens United, rather than reconsidering the constitutionality of broader restrictions on corporate campaign finance. In a 5–4 decision, the Court overturned precedent and allowed corporations to spend freely in elections, a major defeat for the Obama administration.


title: Elena Kagan

text: During her 15 months as Solicitor General, Kagan argued six cases before the Supreme Court. "The Washington Post" described her style during argument as "confident" and "conversational". She helped win four cases: "Salazar v. Buono", , "United States v. Comstock", , "Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project", , and "Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board", .


title: Elena Kagan

text: Before Obama's election, Kagan was the subject of media speculation as a potential Supreme Court nominee if a Democratic president were elected in 2008. Obama had his first Supreme Court vacancy to fill in 2009 when Associate Justice David H. Souter announced his upcoming retirement. Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod later recounted that during the search for a new justice, Antonin Scalia told him he hoped Obama would nominate Kagan, because of her intelligence. On May 13, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Obama was considering Kagan, among others. On May 26, 2009, Obama announced that he had chosen Sonia Sotomayor.


title: Elena Kagan

text: On April 9, 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens announced he would retire at the start of the Court's summer 2010 recess, triggering new speculation about potential replacements, and Kagan was once again considered a contender. In a "Fresh Dialogues" interview, Jeffrey Toobin, a Supreme Court analyst and Kagan's friend and law school classmate, speculated that she would be Obama's nominee, describing her as "very much an Obama-type person, a moderate Democrat, a consensus builder". This alarmed some liberals and progressives, who worried that "replacing Stevens with Kagan risks moving the Court to the right, perhaps substantially to the right".


title: Elena Kagan

text: On May 10, 2010, Obama nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court. The deans of over one-third of the country's law schools, 69 people in total, endorsed the nomination in an open letter in early June. It lauded what it called her coalition-building skills and "understanding of both doctrine and policy" as well as her written record of legal analysis.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan's confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee began on June 28. As they began, Kagan was expected to be confirmed, with Senator John Cornyn calling her "justice-to-be". During the hearings, she demonstrated a deep knowledge of Supreme Court cases, expounding upon cases senators mentioned in their questions to her without taking notes on the questions. A number of Democratic senators criticized recent decisions of the court as "activist", but Kagan avoided joining in their criticisms. Like many prior nominees, including Chief Justice John Roberts, she declined to answer whether she thought particular cases were correctly decided or how she would vote on particular issues. Senators Jon Kyl and Arlen Specter criticized her evasiveness. Specter said it obscured the way justices actually ruled once on the Court. He noted that Kagan published an article in the "University of Chicago Law Review" in 1995 in which she criticized the evasiveness she came to practice. Republican senators criticized Kagan's background as more political than judicial; she responded by promising to be impartial and fair. On July 20, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13–6 to recommend Kagan's confirmation to the full Senate. On August 5 the full Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 63–37. The voting was largely along party lines, with five Republicans (Richard Lugar, Judd Gregg, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe) supporting her and one Democrat (Ben Nelson) opposing.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan's swearing-in ceremony took place on August 7, 2010, at the White House. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the prescribed constitutional and judicial oaths of office, at which time she became the 112th justice (100th associate justice) of the Supreme Court. She is the first person appointed to the Court without any prior experience as a judge since William Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell Jr., who both became members in 1972. She is the fourth female justice in the court's history, and the eighth Jewish justice.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Ideologically, Kagan is part of the Supreme Court's liberal wing: she voted with the liberal bloc in "King v. Burwell", , finding that Obamacare's subsidies and individual mandate are constitutional, and in "Obergefell v. Hodges", , which prohibits states from outlawing same-sex marriage. In 2018, "Slate" observed that Kagan had crossed ideological lines on multiple cases during the preceding term, and considered her to be part of a centrist bloc along with Justices Roberts, Stephen Breyer, and Anthony Kennedy. Still, "FiveThirtyEight" observed that Kagan voted with her more liberal peers, Ginsburg and Sotomayor, over 90% of the time. Also during the 2017–18 term, Kagan most commonly agreed with Breyer; they voted together in 93% of cases. She agreed least often with Justice Samuel Alito, in 58.82% of cases.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Because of her service as solicitor general, Kagan recused herself from 28 out of the 78 cases heard during her first year on the Court to avoid conflicts of interest. In 2017, she recused herself from the immigrant-detention case "Jennings v. Rodriguez" because she authorized a filing in the case when she was solicitor general.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan was the circuit justice, the justice responsible for handling emergency requests, for the Sixth and Seventh Circuits. After Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation, she was assigned to the Ninth Circuit, the largest US circuit court by area. It includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Nevada, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Washington state.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan's first opinion as a justice, "Ransom v. FIA Card Services", was a statutory interpretation case where the Court was tasked with determining what income a debtor was allowed to shield from creditors in bankruptcy. In an 8–1 decision, she held that the Chapter 13 Bankruptcy statute precludes a debtor from taking an allowance for car-related expenses if the debtor owns the car outright and does not make loan or lease payments. She reasoned the word "applicable" was key to the statute, and debtors could only take allowances for car-related costs that applied. Kagan wrote the majority opinion in "Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC". In the 6–3 decision in favor of Marvel, she held that a patentee cannot receive royalties after the patent has expired. Her opinion included several references to Spider-Man.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan's first dissent came in the First Amendment case "Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn", . Writing for the liberal wing, she took issue with the majority's creation of an exception to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The majority held that Arizona taxpayers cannot challenge tax credits for those who donate to groups that provide scholarships to religious schools, drawing a distinction between the way the Court treats tax credits and grants. Kagan deemed this distinction "arbitrary" because tax credits and grants can be used to achieve the same objectives. She viewed the majority's decision as creating a loophole for governments to fund religion. In another Establishment Clause case, "Town of Greece v. Galloway", , Kagan wrote a dissent arguing that a prayer at a town council meeting failed to treat all Americans the same regardless of religion. "Greece" involved a town in New York inviting chaplains, for several years all Christian, to give a prayer before town council meetings. Unlike "Marsh v. Chambers", , where the Supreme Court had permitted a state legislature to open with a prayer, Kagan noted the board in "Greece" was a forum for ordinary citizens. She argued the use of prayer showed a preference for a particular religion and thus violated Americans' First Amendment rights.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan dissented in "Luis v. United States", , where the five-justice majority held that the pretrial freezing of untainted assets not traced back to criminal activity was a violation of a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel when those assets were needed to retain counsel of the defendant's choosing. The defendant, Sila Luis, had been charged with Medicare fraud, in which prosecutors alleged he illegally charged $45 million for unneeded services. The prosecutors asked a judge to freeze $2 million of Luis's assets, which Luis said she needed to pay legal bills, after she had already spent most of the $45 million she made from the alleged scheme. An earlier Supreme Court case, "United States v. Monsanto", , held that a court could freeze a defendant's assets pretrial, including funds obtained through the alleged sale of drugs, even when those assets were being used to hire an attorney. The majority sought to distinguish their holding in "Luis" from "Monsanto" based upon the nature of the funds being frozen; Luis's funds were not directly linked to her crime and Monsanto's funds were. Kennedy dissented in "Luis" because he did not think criminal defendants should be treated differently based on how quickly they spent their illegal proceeds. Kagan agreed with Kennedy that the Court's decision created inequity and drew an arbitrary distinction, but further opined that "Monsanto" might have been wrongly decided. She suggested she would be willing to overturn such precedent in the future, but declined to do so in the case at bar because Luis had not sought that relief. Her vote thus rested on procedural grounds as she expressed skepticism that the government should be able to freeze the assets of a criminal defendant not yet convicted, and thus still benefiting from the presumption of innocence, by merely showing probable cause that the property will be subject to forfeiture.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan wrote for the majority in "Cooper v. Harris", , striking down the configuration of two of North Carolina's congressional districts. The Court held the districts' boundaries were unconstitutional because they relied excessively on race and did not pass the strict scrutiny standard of review. In a footnote, Kagan set forth a new principle, that congressional districts drawn with race as the dominant factor may be found to be an unlawful racial gerrymander even if they have another goal, such as sorting voters by political affiliation. Applying this principle to the facts of the case, the Court unanimously struck down North Carolina's District 1, where state lawmakers had increased the state's black voting-age population by 4.1% even though the black population had already been able to elect preferred candidates before the district lines were redrawn. The increase of black voters in District 1 resulted in a decrease of black voters in other districts. The Court also struck down District 12 by a vote of 5–3 for similar shifts in its racial composition. The dissent argued that those challenging the validity of the district had not proved that race caused the change in District 12. Kagan quoted Court precedent that race must only be a predominant consideration, and that challengers did not need to prove politics was not a motivating factor.


title: Elena Kagan

text: In June 2019, Kagan dissented in "Rucho v. Common Cause", a 5-4 ruling that held that partisan gerrymandering is a non-justiciable claim. Kagan wrote, "Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections. With respect but deep sadness, I dissent." Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor joined her dissent.


title: Elena Kagan

text: In "Brnovich v. DNC", Kagan wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Breyer and Sotomayor. She would have struck down the Arizona voting laws that throw out votes that are cast out-of-precinct and ban ballot harvesting. Kagan wrote that African-American, Latino, and Native American voters are disproportionately likely to have their votes thrown out for being out-of-precinct (compared to White voters). She concluded, "The law that confronted one of this country’s most enduring wrongs; pledged to give every American, of every race, an equal chance to participate in our democracy; and now stands as the crucial tool to achieve that goal. That law, of all laws, deserves the sweep and power Congress gave it. That law, of all laws, should not be diminished by this Court."


title: Elena Kagan

text: Joined by Justices Breyer and Sotomayor, Kagan dissented in "West Virginia v. EPA", which struck down the proposed Clean Power Plan. She wrote, "It is EPA (that's the Environmental Protection Agency, in case the majority forgot) acting to address the greatest environmental challenge of our time. So too, there is nothing special about the Plan's 'who': fossil-fuel-fired power plants. In Utility Air, we thought EPA's regulation of churches and schools highly unusual. But fossil-fuel-fired plants? Those plants pollute—a lot—and so they have long lived under the watchful eye of EPA. That was true even before EPA began regulating carbon dioxide." Kagan concluded, "The subject matter of the regulation here makes the Court's intervention all the more troubling. Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. And let's say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening. Respectfully, I dissent."


title: Elena Kagan

text: In her first term on the Court, Kagan did not write any separate opinions, and wrote the fewest opinions of any justice. She wrote only majority opinions or dissents that more senior justices assigned to her, and in which she and a group of justices agreed upon a rationale for deciding the case. This tendency to write for a group rather than herself made it difficult to discern her own views or where she might lean in future cases. She wrote the fewest opinions for the terms from 2011 through 2014, tying with Kennedy in 2011 and 2013.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan's writing has been characterized as conversational, employing a range of rhetorical styles. She has said that she approaches writing on the Court like she used to approach the classroom, with numerous strategies to engage the reader. Her opinions use examples and analogies to make them more accessible to a broad audience.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Like other justices, Kagan makes public appearances when she is not hearing cases. In her first four years on the Court, she made at least 20 public appearances. Kagan tends to choose speaking engagements that allow her to speak to students.


title: Elena Kagan

text: "Time" magazine named Kagan one of its Time 100 most influential people for 2013. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the article on Kagan, calling her "an incisive legal thinker" and "excellent communicator". That same year, a painting of the four women to have served as Supreme Court justices, Kagan, Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and O'Connor, was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 2018, Kagan received the Marshall-Wythe Medallion from William & Mary Law School, and an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Hunter College.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan has never married. During her confirmation, a photo of her playing softball, which is sometimes characterized in popular culture as unfeminine, led to unsubstantiated claims that Kagan was a lesbian. Her friends have criticized the rumors. Kagan's law school roommate Sarah Walzer said, "I've known her for most of her adult life and I know she's straight."


title: Elena Kagan

text: Kagan's Harvard colleagues and friends have characterized her as a good conversationalist, warm, with a good sense of humor. Before joining the Supreme Court, she was known to play poker and smoke cigars.


title: Elena Kagan

text: Early in her tenure as a justice, Kagan began socializing with several of her new colleagues. She attended the opera with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had dinner with Sonia Sotomayor, attended legal events with Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, and went hunting with Antonin Scalia. The hunting trips stemmed from a promise Kagan made to U.S. Senator Jim Risch of Idaho during a meeting before her confirmation; Risch expressed concern that, as a New York City native, Kagan did not understand the importance of hunting to his constituents. Kagan initially offered to go hunting with Risch before promising instead to go hunting with Scalia if confirmed. According to Kagan, Scalia laughed when she told him of the promise and took her to his hunting club for the first of several hunting trips. Kagan is known to spend time with longtime friends from law school and her stint in the Clinton administration rather than attending Washington, D.C. social events she is invited to as a justice.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch on the Orontes (; , "Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou", ; also Syrian Antioch) was a Hellenistic, and later, a Christian city, founded by Seleucus I Nicator in 300 BC. This city served as the capital of the Seleucid Empire and later as regional capital to both the Roman and Byzantine Empire. During the Crusades, Antioch served as the capital of the Principality of Antioch, one of four Crusader states that were founded in the Levant. Its inhabitants were known as "Antiochenes"; the city's ruin lies on the Orontes River, near Antakya, the modern city in Hatay Province of Turkey (Türkiye), to which the ancient city lends its name.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch was founded near the end of the fourth century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, as one of the four cities of the Seleucis of Syria. The city's location offered geographical, military, and economic benefits to its occupants; Antioch was heavily involved in the spice trade and lay within easy reach of the Silk Road and the Royal Road. During the late Hellenistic period and Middle Roman Empire, Antioch's population may have reached a peak of over 500,000 inhabitants (most generally estimate between 200,000–250,000), making the city the third largest in the Empire after Rome and Alexandria and one of the most important cities in the eastern Mediterranean. The city was the capital of the Seleucid Empire from 240 BC until 63 BC, when the Romans took control, making it capital of the province of Syria and later of Coele Syria. From the early fourth century, Antioch was the seat of the Count of the Orient, head of the Diocese of the East. The Romans provided the city with walls that covered almost , of which one quarter was mountain, leaving – about one-fifth the area of Rome within the Aurelian Walls.


title: Antioch

text: It was also the main center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. Antioch was part of the pentarchy and was called "the cradle of Christianity" as a result of its longevity and the pivotal role that it played in the emergence of early Christianity. The Christian New Testament asserts that the name "Christian" first emerged in Antioch. The city declined to relative insignificance during the Middle Ages due to warfare, repeated earthquakes, and a change in trade routes. The city still lends its name to Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, one of the most important churches of the Levant and eastern Mediterranean.


title: Antioch

text: Two routes from the Mediterranean Sea, lying through the Orontes river gorge and the Belen Pass, converge in the plain of the Antioch Lake, now called Lake Amik, and are met there by


title: Antioch

text: The settlement called Meroe pre-dated Antioch. A shrine of the Semitic goddess Anat, called by Herodotus the "Persian Artemis", was located here. This site was included in the eastern suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius named "Io", or "Iopolis". This name was always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes ("e.g." Libanius) anxious to affiliate themselves to the Attic Ionians—an eagerness which is illustrated by the Athenian types used on the city's coins. Io may have been a small early colony of trading Greeks (Javan). John Malalas also mentions an archaic village, Bottia, in the plain by the river.


title: Antioch

text: Alexander the Great is said to have camped on the site of Antioch and dedicated an altar to Zeus Bottiaeus; it lay in the northwest of the future city. This account is found only in the writings of Libanius, a fourth-century orator from Antioch, and may be legend intended to enhance Antioch's status. But the story is not unlikely in itself.


title: Antioch

text: After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, his generals, the Diadochi, divided up the territory he had conquered. After the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BCE, Seleucus I Nicator won the territory of Syria, and he proceeded to found four "sister cities" in northwestern Syria, one of which was Antioch, a city named in honor of his father Antiochus; according to the "Suda", it might be named after his son Antiochus. He is reputed to have built sixteen Antiochs.


title: Antioch

text: Seleucus founded Antioch on a site chosen through ritual means. An eagle, the bird of Zeus, had been given a piece of sacrificial meat and the city was founded on the site to which the eagle carried the offering. Seleucus did this on the 22nd day of the month of Artemísios in the twelfth year of his reign, equivalent to May 300 BCE. Antioch soon rose above Seleucia Pieria to become the Syrian capital.


title: Antioch

text: The original city of Seleucus was laid out in imitation of the grid plan of Alexandria by the architect Xenarius. Libanius describes the first building and arrangement of this city (i. p. 300. 17).


title: Antioch

text: The citadel was on Mount Silpius and the city lay mainly on the low ground to the north, fringing the river. Two great colonnaded streets intersected in the centre. Shortly afterwards a second quarter was laid out, probably on the east and by Antiochus I Soter, which, from an expression of Strabo, appears to have been the native, as contrasted with the Greek, town. It was enclosed by a wall of its own.


title: Antioch

text: In the Orontes, north of the city, lay a large island, and on this Seleucus II Callinicus began a third walled "city", which was finished by Antiochus III the Great. A fourth and last quarter was added by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BC); thenceforth Antioch was known as "Tetrapolis". From west to east the whole was about in diameter and a little less from north to south. This area included many large gardens.


title: Antioch

text: The new city was populated by a mix of local settlers that Athenians brought from the nearby city of Antigonia, Macedonians, and Jews (who were given full status from the beginning). According to ancient tradition, Antioch was settled by 5,500 Athenians and Macedonians, together with an unknown number of native Syrians. This number probably refers to free adult citizens, so that the total number of free Greek settlers including women and children was probably between 17,000 and 25,000.


title: Antioch

text: About west and beyond the suburb Heraclea lay the paradise of Daphne, a park of woods and waters, in the midst of which rose a great temple to the Pythian Apollo, also founded by Seleucus I and enriched with a cult-statue of the god, as Musagetes, by Bryaxis. A companion sanctuary of Hecate was constructed underground by Diocletian. The beauty and the lax morals of Daphne were celebrated all over the ancient world; and indeed Antioch as a whole shared in both these titles to fame.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch became the capital and court-city of the western Seleucid Empire under Antiochus I, its counterpart in the east being Seleucia; but its paramount importance dates from the battle of Ancyra (240 BC), which shifted the Seleucid centre of gravity from Anatolia, and led indirectly to the rise of Pergamon.


title: Antioch

text: The Seleucids reigned from Antioch. We know little of it in the Hellenistic period, apart from Syria, all our information coming from authors of the late Roman time. Among its great Greek buildings we hear only of the theatre, of which substructures still remain on the flank of Silpius, and of the royal palace, probably situated on the island. It enjoyed a reputation for being "a populous city, full of most erudite men and rich in the most liberal studies", but the only names of distinction in these pursuits during the Seleucid period that have come down to us are Apollophanes, the Stoic, and one Phoebus, a writer on dreams. The nicknames which they gave to their later kings were Aramaic; and, except Apollo and Daphne, the great divinities of north Syria seem to have remained essentially native, such as the "Persian Artemis" of Meroe and Atargatis of Hierapolis Bambyce.


title: Antioch

text: The epithet "Golden" suggests that the external appearance of Antioch was impressive, but the city needed constant restoration owing to the seismic disturbances to which the district has always been subjected. The first great earthquake in recorded history was related by the native chronicler John Malalas. It occurred in 148 BC and did immense damage.


title: Antioch

text: Local politics were turbulent. In the many dissensions of the Seleucid house the population took sides, and frequently rose in rebellion, for example against Alexander Balas in 147 BC, and Demetrius II Nicator in 129 BC. The latter, enlisting a body of Jews, punished his capital with fire and sword. In the last struggles of the Seleucid house, Antioch turned against its feeble rulers, invited Tigranes the Great to occupy the city in 83 BC, tried to unseat Antiochus XIII Asiaticus in 65 BC, and petitioned Rome against his restoration in the following year. Antioch's wish prevailed, and it passed with Syria to the Roman Republic in 64 BC, but remained a "civitas libera".


title: Antioch

text: The Roman emperors favored the city from the first moments, seeing it as a more suitable capital for the eastern part of the empire than Alexandria could be, because of the isolated position of Egypt. To a certain extent they tried to make it an eastern Rome. Julius Caesar visited it in 47 BC, and confirmed its freedom. A great temple to Jupiter Capitolinus rose on Silpius, probably at the insistence of Octavian, whose cause the city had espoused. A forum of Roman type was laid out. Tiberius built two long colonnades on the south towards Silpius.


title: Antioch

text: Strabo, writing in the reign of Augustus and the first years of Tiberius, states that Antioch is not much smaller than Seleucia and Alexandria; Alexandria had been said by Diodorus Siculus in the mid-1st Century BC to have 300,000 free inhabitants, which would mean that Antioch was about this size in Strabo's time.


title: Antioch

text: Agrippa and Tiberius enlarged the theatre, and Trajan finished their work. Antoninus Pius paved the great east to west artery with granite. A circus, other colonnades and great numbers of baths were built, and new aqueducts to supply them bore the names of Caesars, the finest being the work of Hadrian. The Roman client, King Herod (most likely the great builder Herod the Great), erected a long "stoa" on the east, and Agrippa (–12 BC) encouraged the growth of a new suburb south of this.


title: Antioch

text: One of the most famous urban additions to Antioch, done by the Romans probably under Augustus when the city had more than half a million inhabitants, was the Circus of Antioch: it was a Roman hippodrome. Used for chariot racing, it was modelled on the Circus Maximus in Rome and other circus buildings throughout the empire. Measuring more than in length and of width, the Circus could house up to 80,000 spectators.


title: Antioch

text: Zarmanochegas (Zarmarus) a monk of the Sramana tradition of India, according to Strabo and Dio Cassius, met Nicholas of Damascus in Antioch around 13 AD as part of a Mission to Augustus. At Antioch Germanicus died in 19 AD, and his body was burnt in the forum.


title: Antioch

text: An earthquake that shook Antioch in AD 37 caused the emperor Caligula to send two senators to report on the condition of the city. Another quake followed in the next reign.


title: Antioch

text: In 115 AD, during Trajan's travel there during his war against Parthia, the whole site was convulsed by a huge earthquake. The landscape altered, and the emperor himself was forced to take shelter in the circus for several days. He and his successor restored the city, but the population was reduced to less than 400,000 inhabitants and many sections of the city were abandoned.


title: Antioch

text: In 256 AD, the town was suddenly raided by the Persians under Shapur I, and many of the people were slain in the theatre. It was recaptured by the Roman emperor Valerian the following year.


title: Antioch

text: When the emperor Julian visited in 362 on a detour to Persia, he had high hopes for Antioch, regarding it as a rival to the imperial capital of Constantinople. Antioch had a mixed pagan and Christian population, which Ammianus Marcellinus implies lived quite harmoniously together. However Julian's visit began ominously as it coincided with a lament for Adonis, the doomed lover of Aphrodite. Thus, Ammianus wrote, the emperor and his soldiers entered the city not to the sound of cheers but to wailing and screaming.


title: Antioch

text: After being advised that the bones of 3rd-century martyred bishop Babylas were suppressing the oracle of Apollo at Daphne, he made a public-relations mistake in ordering the removal of the bones from the vicinity of the temple. The result was a massive Christian procession. Shortly after that, when the temple was destroyed by fire, Julian suspected the Christians and ordered stricter investigations than usual. He also shut up the chief Christian church of the city, before the investigations proved that the fire was the result of an accident.


title: Antioch

text: Julian found much else about which to criticize the Antiochene; Julian had wanted the empire's cities to be more self-managing, as they had been some 200 years before. However Antioch's city councilmen showed themselves unwilling to shore up Antioch's food shortage with their own resources, so dependent were they on the emperor. Ammianus wrote that the councilmen shirked their duties by bribing unwitting men in the marketplace to do the job for them.


title: Antioch

text: The city's impiety to the old religion was clear to Julian when he attended the city's annual feast of Apollo. To his surprise and dismay the only Antiochene present was an old priest clutching a goose.


title: Antioch

text: The Antiochenes in turn hated Julian for worsening the food shortage with the burden of his billeted troops, wrote Ammianus. The soldiers were often to be found gorged on sacrificial meat, making a drunken nuisance of themselves on the streets while Antioch's hungry citizens looked on in disgust. The Christian Antiochenes and Julian's pagan Gallic soldiers also never quite saw eye to eye.


title: Antioch

text: Julian's piety was distasteful to the Antiochenes, even to those who kept the old religion. Julian's brand of paganism was very much unique to himself, with little support outside the most educated Neoplatonist circles. The irony of Julian's enthusiasm for large scale animal sacrifice could not have escaped the hungry Antiochenes. Julian gained no admiration for his personal involvement in the sacrifices, only the nickname "axeman", wrote Ammianus.


title: Antioch

text: The emperor's high-handed, severe methods and his rigid administration prompted Antiochene lampoons about, among other things, Julian's unfashionably pointed beard.


title: Antioch

text: Julian's successor, Valens, who endowed Antioch with a new forum, including a statue of Valentinian on a central column, reopened the great church of Constantine, which stood until the Persian sack in 538, by Chosroes.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch was a chief center of early Christianity during Roman times. The city had a large population of Jewish origin in a quarter called the Kerateion, and so attracted the earliest missionaries. Evangelized, among others, by Peter himself, according to the tradition upon which the Patriarch of Antioch still rests its claim for primacy, and certainly later by Barnabas and Paul. Its converts were the first to be called "Christians." This is not to be confused with Antioch in Pisidia, to which Barnabas and Paul later travelled.


title: Antioch

text: Surrounding the city were a number of Greek, Syrian, Armenian, and Latin monasteries. Between 252 and 300 AD, ten assemblies of the church were held at Antioch and it became the seat of one of the five original patriarchates, along with Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Rome (see Pentarchy).


title: Antioch

text: John Chrysostom writes that when Ignatius of Antioch was bishop in the city, the "dêmos," probably meaning the number of free adult men and women without counting children and slaves, numbered 200,000. In a letter written in 363, Libanius says the city contains 150,000 "anthrôpoi," a word which would ordinarily mean all human beings of any age, sex, or social status, seemingly indicating a decline in the population since the 1st Century. Chrysostom also says in one of his homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, which were delivered between 386 and 393, that in his own time there were 100,000 Christians in Antioch, a figure which may refer to orthodox Christians who belonged to the Great Church as opposed to members of other groups such as Arians and Apollinarians, or to all Christians of any persuasion.


title: Antioch

text: The Maronite Catholic Church's patriarch is called the Patriarch of Antioch and all the East. He currently resides in Bkerke - Lebanon. The Maronites continue the Antiochene liturgical tradition and the use of the Syrian-Aramaic (Syro-Aramaic or Western Aramaic) language in their liturgies.


title: Antioch

text: One of the canonical Eastern Orthodox churches is still called the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, although it moved its headquarters from Antioch to Damascus, Syria, several centuries ago (see list of Patriarchs of Antioch), and its prime bishop retains the title "Patriarch of Antioch", somewhat analogous to the manner in which several Popes, heads of the Roman Catholic Church remained "Bishop of Rome" even while residing in Avignon, in present-day France, in the 14th century.


title: Antioch

text: Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, is an Oriental Orthodox Church with autocephalous patriarchate founded by Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the 1st century, according to its tradition. The Syriac Orthodox Church is part of Oriental Orthodoxy, a distinct communion of churches claiming to continue the patristic and Apostolic Christology before the schism following the Council of Chalcedon in 451.


title: Antioch

text: In 387 AD, there was a great sedition caused by a new tax levied by order of Theodosius I, and the city was punished by the loss of its metropolitan status. He divided the Roman Empire, and since then Antioch was under Constantinople's rule.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch and its port, Seleucia Pieria, were severely damaged by the great earthquake of 526. Seleucia Pieria, which was already fighting a losing battle against continual silting, never recovered. Justinian I renamed Antioch Theopolis ("City of God") and restored many of its public buildings, but the destructive work was completed by the Persian king, Khosrau I, twelve years later, who deported the population to a newly built city in Persian Mesopotamia, Weh Antiok Khosrow. Antioch lost as many as 300,000 people. Justinian I made an effort to revive it, and Procopius describes his repairing of the walls; but its glory was past.


title: Antioch

text: During the Byzantine–Sassanid War of 602–628 the Emperor Heraclius confronted the invading Persian army of Khosrow II outside Antioch in 613. The Byzantines were defeated by forces under the generals Shahrbaraz and Shahin Vahmanzadegan at the Battle of Antioch, after which the city fell to the Sassanians, together with much of Syria and eastern Anatolia.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch gave its name to a certain school of Christian thought, distinguished by literal interpretation of the Scriptures and insistence on the human limitations of Jesus. Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia were the leaders of this school. The principal local saint was Simeon Stylites, who lived an extremely ascetic life atop a pillar for 40 years some east of Antioch. His body was brought to the city and buried in a building erected under the emperor Leo. During the Byzantine era great bathhouses were built in Byzantine centers such as Constantinople and Antioch.


title: Antioch

text: In 637, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, Antioch was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate during the Battle of the Iron Bridge. The city became known in Arabic as . Since the Umayyad dynasty was unable to penetrate the Anatolian plateau, Antioch found itself on the frontline of the conflicts between two hostile empires during the next 350 years, so that the city went into a precipitous decline.


title: Antioch

text: In 969, the city was recovered for the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas by Michael Bourtzes and the "stratopedarches" Peter. It soon became the seat of a "doux", the civil governor of the homonymous theme, but also the seat of the somewhat more important "Domestic of the Schools of the Orient", the supreme military commander of the imperial forces on the eastern frontier. Sometimes both offices were held by the same person, usually military officers such as Nikephoros Ouranos, or Philaretos Brachamios, who managed to retain the integrity of the eastern borderline after the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia. As the empire disintegrated rapidly before the Komnenian restoration, "Dux of Antioch" & "Domestic of the Schools of the East" Philaretos Brachamios held the city until Suleiman ibn Qutalmish, the emir of Rum, captured it from him in 1084. Two years later, Suleiman was killed fighting against Tutush, the brother of the Seljuk Sultan, who annexed the city into the Seljuk empire. Yagisiyan was appointed governor and became increasingly independent within the tumtuluous years following Malik-Shah's death in 1092.


title: Antioch

text: The Crusaders' Siege of Antioch conquered the city in June 1098 on their way to Jerusalem. At this time, the bulk of far eastern trade traveled through Egypt, but in the second half of the 12th century Nur ed-Din and later Saladin brought order to Muslim Syria, opening up long-distance trade routes, including to Antioch and on to its new port, St Symeon, which had replaced Seleucia Pieria. However, the Mongol conquests of the 13th century altered the main trade routes from the far east, as they encouraged merchants to take the overland route through Mongol territory to the Black Sea, reducing the prosperity of Antioch.


title: Antioch

text: In 1100, Tancred became the regent of Antioch after his uncle and predecessor Bohemond I of Antioch was taken prisoner for three years (1100–03) by Gazi Gümüshtigin of the Danishmends at the Battle of Melitene. Tancred expanded the territory of Antioch by conquering Byzantine Cilicia, Tarsus, and Adana in 1101 and founding the principality, Byzantine Latakia, in 1103. In 1107 Bohemond enraged by an earlier defeat when he, allianced with Edessa, attacked Aleppo, and Baldwin of Bourcq and Joscelin of Courtenay (Bourcq's most powerful vassal) were briefly captured, as well as the Byzantines recapturing of Cilicia and the harbor and lower town of Lattakieh, he renamed Tancred as the regent of Antioch and sailed for Europe with the intent of gaining support for an attack against the Greeks.


title: Antioch

text: From 1107 to 1108, Bohemond led a 'crusade' against Byzantium, with the Latins crossing the Adriatic in October 1107 and laying siege to the city of Durrës (in modern Albania), which is often regarded as the western gate of the Greek empire. Bohemond was outwitted by Alexius, who deployed his forces to cut the invaders' supply lines whilst avoiding direct confrontation. The Latins were weakened by hunger and proved unable to break the defenses of Durrës. Bohemond capitulated in September 1108 and was forced to accede to a peace accord, the Treaty of Devol. The terms of this agreement stipulated that Bohemond was to hold Antioch for the remainder of his life as the emperor's subject and the Greek patriarch was to be restored to power in the city. However Tancred refused to honor the Treaty of Devol in which Bohemond swore an oath, and it is not until 1158 that it truly became a vassal state of the Byzantine Empire. Six months after the Treaty of Devol Bohemond died, and Tancred remained regent of Antioch until his death during a typhoid epidemic in 1112.


title: Antioch

text: After the death of Tancred, the principality passed to Roger of Salerno, who helped rebuild Antioch after an earthquake destroyed its foundations in 1114. With the defeat of Roger's crusading army and his death at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119 the role of regent was assumed by Baldwin II of Jerusalem, lasting until 1126, with the exception from 1123 to 1124 when he was briefly captured by the Artuqids and held captive alongside Joscelin of Courtenay. In 1126 Bohemond II arrived from Apulia in order to gain regency over Antioch. In February 1130 Bohemond was lured into an ambush by Leo I, Prince of Armenia who allied with the Danishmend Gazi Gümüshtigin, and was killed in the subsequent battle, his head was then embalmed, placed in a silver box, and sent as a gift to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch was again ruled by a regency, firstly being Baldwin II, after his daughter and Bohemond II's wife, Alice of Antioch attempted to block Baldwin from entering Antioch, but failed when Antiochene nobles such as Fulk of Jerusalem (Alice's brother-in-law) opened up the gates for representatives of Baldwin II. Alice was then expelled from Antioch. With the death of Balwin in 1131, Alice briefly took control of Antioch and allied herself with Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin II of Edessa in an attempt to prevent Fulk, King of Jerusalem from marching north in 1132, however this attempt failed and Fulk and Pons fought a brief battle before peace was made and Alice was exiled again. In 1133 the king chose Raymond of Poitiers as a groom for Constance of Antioch, daughter of Bohemund II of Antioch and Alice, princess of Jerusalem. The marriage took place in 1136 between the 21-year-old Raymond and the 9-year-old Constance.


title: Antioch

text: Immediately after assuming control, Raymond was involved in conflicts with the Byzantine Emperor John II Comnenus who had come south to recover Cilicia from Leo of Armenia, and to reassert his rights over Antioch. The engagement lasted until 1137 when emperor John II arrived with an army before the walls of Antioch. Although the basileus did not enter the city, his banner was raised atop the citadel and Raymond was compelled to do homage. Raymond agreed with the emperor that if he was capable of capturing Aleppo, Shaizar, and Homs, he would exchange Antioch for them.


title: Antioch

text: John went on to attack Aleppo with the aid of Antioch and Edessa, and failed to capture it, with the Franks withdrawing their support when he moved on to capture Shaizar. John returned to Antioch ahead of his army and entered Antioch, only to be forced to leave when Joscelin II, Count of Edessa rallied the citizens to oust him. In 1142 John then returned but Raymond refused to submit and John was forced to return to Cilicia again due to the coming winter, to plan an attack the following season. However the emperor died on April 8, 1143.


title: Antioch

text: The following year after the death of John II Comnenus, Imad ad-Din Zengi lay siege to Edessa, the crusader capital, and with the death of Imad ad-Din Zengi in 1146, he was succeeded by his son, Nur ad-Din Zangi. Zangi attacked Antioch in both 1147 and 1148 and succeeded during the second venture in occupying most of the territory east of the Orontes including Artah, Kafar Latha, Basarfut, and Balat, but failing to capture Antioch itself. With the Second Crusades army previously nearly entirely defeated by the Turks and by sickness, Louis VII of France arrived in Antioch on March 19, 1148, after being delayed by storms. Louis was welcomed by the uncle of his spouse Eleanor of Aquitaine, Raymond of Poitiers.


title: Antioch

text: Louis refused to help Antioch defend against the Turks and to lead an expedition against Aleppo, and instead decided to finish his pilgrimage to Jerusalem rather than focus on the military aspect of the Crusades. With Louis quickly leaving Antioch again and the Crusades returning home in 1149, Nur ad-Din launched an offensive against the territories which were dominated by the Castle of Harim, situated on the eastern bank of the Orontes, after which Nur besieged the castle of Inab. Raymond of Poitiers quickly came to the aid of the citadel, where he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Inab, Raymond's head was then cut off and sent to Nur, who sent it to the caliph in Baghdad. However, Nur ad-Din did not attack Antioch itself and was content with capturing all of Antiochene territory that lay east of the Orontes.


title: Antioch

text: With Raymond dead and Bohemond III only five years of age, the principality came under the control of Raymond's widow Constance of Antioch, however real control lay with Aimery of Limoges. In 1152 Baldwin III of Jerusalem came of age, but from 1150 he had proposed three different but respectable suitors for Constance's hand in marriage, all of whom she rejected. In 1153 however, she chose Raynald of Châtillon and married him in secret without consulting her first cousin and liege lord, Baldwin III, and neither Baldwin nor Aimery of Limoges approved of her choice.


title: Antioch

text: In 1156 Raynald claimed that the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus had reneged on his promises to pay Raynald a sum of money, and vowed to attack the island of Cyprus in revenge. However Aimery refused to finance Raynald's expedition, so in turn Raynald had the Patriarch seized, beaten, stripped naked, covered in honey, and had him left in the burning sun on top of the citadel to be attacked by insects. When the Patriarch was released, he collapsed in exhaustion and agreed to finance Raynald's expedition.


title: Antioch

text: In the meantime, Raynald had allied himself with the Armenian prince, Thoros II. In 1156 Raynald's forces attacked Cyprus, ravaging the island over a three-week period, with , killing, and plundering its citizens. After which, Manuel I Comnenus raised an army and began their march towards Syria, as a result Raynald threw himself to the mercy of the emperor who insisted on the installation of a Greek Patriarch and the surrender of the citadel in Antioch. The following spring, Manuel made a triumphant entry into the city and established himself as the unquestioned suzerain of Antioch.


title: Antioch

text: In 1160 Raynald was captured by Muslims during a plundering raid against the Syrian and Armenian peasants of the neighborhood of Marash. He was held captive for sixteen years, and as the stepfather of the Empress Maria, he was ransomed by Manuel for 120,000 gold dinars in 1176 (about 500 kg of gold, worth approximately £16 million or US$26 million ). With Raynald disposed of for a long time, the patriarch Aimery became the new regent, chosen by Baldwin III. To further consolidate his own claim over Antioch, Manuel chose Maria of Antioch as his bride, daughter of Constance of Antioch and Raymond of Poitiers. But the government of Antioch remained in crisis up until 1163, when Constance asked the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia to help maintain her rule, as a result the citizens of Antioch exiled her and installed her son Bohemond III and now brother-in-law to the emperor, as regent.


title: Antioch

text: One year later, Nur ad-Din Zangi captured Bohemond III when he defeated a joint Antiochene-Tripolitan army. Bohemond III was soon released, however Harem, Syria which Raynald had recaptured in 1158, was lost again and the frontier of Antioch was permanently placed west of the Orontes. Byzantine influence remained in Antioch and in 1165, Bohemond III married a niece of the emperor, Maria of Antioch, and installed a Greek patriarch in the city, Athanasius II, Patriarch of Antioch, who remained in his position until he died in an earthquake five years later.


title: Antioch

text: On October 29, 1187, Pope Gregory VIII issued the papal bull "Audita tremendi", his call for the Third Crusade. Frederick I Barbarossa, Richard I of England, and Philip II of France answered the summons. With Richard and Philip deciding to take a sea route, Frederick lacked the necessary ships and took a land route where he pushed on through Anatolia, defeating the Turks in the Battle of Iconium, however upon reaching Christian territory in Lesser Armenia (Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia) the emperor drowned in the river Saleph. The emperor was buried at Antioch and the Germans became an insignificant contingent during the crusade. Throughout the Third Crusade Antioch remained neutral, however with the end of the Third Crusade (1192), they were included in the Treaty of Ramla between Richard and Saladin.


title: Antioch

text: With no heir after the death of Raymond III, Count of Tripoli in the Battle of Hattin he left his godson, Raymond IV, Count of Tripoli, the eldest son of Bohemond III. However Bohemond installed his younger, the future prince Bohemond IV of Antioch, as count of Tripoli. Shortly after the end of the Third Crusade, Raymond IV, Count of Tripoli married Alice of Armenia, the niece of Leo II, or Leo I, King of Armenia, and a vassal to Antioch. Alice bore Raymond IV a son in 1199, Raymond-Roupen, after which Raymond IV died in the coming months. In 1194 Leo II tricked Bohemond III making him believe that the new born prince had been captured by the Roupenians. Leo made a failed attempt at capturing Antioch believing the city would be weakened with the absence of Bohemond.


title: Antioch

text: Henry II, Count of Champagne nephew to both Richard I and Philip II, travelled to Lesser Armenia and managed to persuade Leo that in exchange for Antioch, renouncing its overlordship to Lesser Armenia and to release Bohemond, who in 1201 died. With the death of Bohemond III there followed a 15-year struggle for power of Antioch, between Tripoli and Lesser Armenia. According to the rules of primogeniture Leo's great nephew Raymond-Roupen was the rightful heir of Antioch, and Leo's position was supported by the pope. However, on the other hand, the city commune of Antioch supported Bohemond IV of Antioch, on the grounds that he was the closest blood relative to the last ruling prince, Bohemond III. In 1207 Bohemond IV installed a Greek patriarch in Antioch, despite the East-West Schism, under the help of Aleppo, Bohemond IV drove Leo out of Antioch.


title: Antioch

text: In 1213 Pope Innocent III's papal bull "Quia maior" called for all of Christendom to lead a new (Fifth) crusade. This strengthened the support of sultan al-Adil I, an Ayyubid-Egyptian general who supported Raymond-Roupen's claims in Antioch. In 1216 Leo installed Raymond-Roupen as prince of Antioch, and ending all military aspect of the struggle between Tripoli and Lesser Armenia, but the citizens again revolted against Raymond-Roupen in and Bohemond of Tripoli was recognised as the fourth prince of that name. Bohemond IV and his son Bohemond V remained neutral in the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines to the south which arose when Frederich II married Isabella II, and in 1233 Bohemond IV died.


title: Antioch

text: From 1233 onwards Antioch declined and appeared rarely in records for 30 years, and in 1254 the altercations of the past between Antioch and Armenia were laid to rest when Bohemond VI of Antioch married the then 17‑year‑old Sibylla of Armenia, and Bohemond VI became a vassal of the Armenian kingdom. Effectively, the Armenian kings ruled Antioch while the prince of Antioch resided in Tripoli. The Armenians drew up a treaty with the Mongols, who were now ravaging Muslim lands, and under protection they extended their territory into the lands of the Seljuq dynasty in the north and the Aleppo territory to the south. Antioch was part of this Armeno-Mongol alliance. Bohemond VI managed to retake Lattakieh and reestablished the land bridge between Antioch and Tripoli, while the Mongols insisted he install the Greek patriarch there rather than a Latin one, due to the Mongols attempting to strengthen ties with the Byzantine Empire. This earned Bohemond the enmity of the Latins of Acre, and Bohemond was excommunicated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pope Urban IV, which was later suspended.


title: Antioch

text: In 1259 the Mongols captured the Syrian city of Damascus, and eventually in 1260, Aleppo. The Mamluk sultan Saif ad-Din Qutuz looked to ally with the Franks, who declined. In September 1260, the Mamluks defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut, shortly after Qutuz was assassinated at Al-Salihiyya, and according to various sources his successor Baibars was involved in his murder. (Baibars "came to power with [the] regicide [of Qutuz] on his conscience" according to Tschanz.) Despite this, Baibars was named sultan, and in 1263 sacked Nazareth, threatened Antioch with invasion, and appeared before the walls of Acre. In January 1265 Baibars launched an offensive against the Latins, starting with Acre, the capital of the remnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but was unable to take it, but defeated the Crusaders in many other battles in Arsuf, Athlith, Haifa, etc. And in 1268 Baibars besieged Antioch, capturing the city on May 18. Baibars promised to spare the lives of the inhabitants, but broke his promise and razed the city, killing or enslaving nearly the entire population upon their surrender.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch's ruler, Prince Bohemond VI was then left with no territories except the County of Tripoli. Without any southern fortifications and with Antioch isolated it could not withstand the onslaught of resurgent Muslim forces, and with the fall of the city, the remainder of northern Syria eventually capitulated, ending the Latin presence in Syria. The Mamluk armies killed or enslaved every Christian in Antioch. In 1355 it still had a considerable population, but by 1432 there were only about 300 inhabited houses within its walls, mostly occupied by Turcomans.


title: Antioch

text: Antioch was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the conquest of Syria in 1516. It formed a sub-province ("sancak") or tax collectorship ("muhassıllık") of the province of Aleppo (Aleppo Eyalet). Beginning in the mid-18th century, the district witnessed an influx of Alawite settlers coming from the Latakia area. The famous Barker family of British consuls had a summer home in Suwaydiyya (today's Samandağ), at the mouth of the Orontes River, in the 19th century. Between 1831 and 1840, Antioch was the military headquarters of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt during the Egyptian occupation of Syria, and served as a model site for the modernizing reforms he wished to institute.


title: Antioch

text: Few traces of the once great Roman city are visible today aside from the massive fortification walls that snake up the mountains to the east of the modern city, several aqueducts, and the Church of St Peter (St Peter's Cave Church, Cave-Church of St. Peter), said to be a meeting place of an Early Christian community. The majority of the Roman city lies buried beneath deep sediments from the Orontes River, or has been obscured by recent construction.


title: Antioch

text: Between 1932 and 1939, archaeological excavations of Antioch were undertaken under the direction of the "Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and Its Vicinity", which was made up of representatives from the Louvre Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, Princeton University, Wellesley College, and later (1936) also the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University and its affiliate Dumbarton Oaks.