it wasn’t an issue

it wasn’t an issue the ban lasted only for the spring semester in 2005. The Pentagon told the university over the summer that it would withhold “all possible funds” if the law school continued to bar recruiters from the main placement office. So, after consulting with other university officials, Ms. Kagan said, she lifted the ban.

After doing so, she and 39 other Harvard law professors signed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to invalidate Solomon. So did the university.

They all received a dose of reality in March 2006 when the court ruled, 8 to 0, against them.

“A military recruiter’s mere presence on campus does not violate a law school’s right to associate, regardless of how repugnant the law school considers the recruiter’s message,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the opinion.

The ruling had little practical effect, since most universities, including Harvard, were in compliance. Despite the legal setback, Ms. Kagan continued to express her views, if less vocally.

“Harvard was not a leader on this issue, and that was very painful,” said Amanda C. Goad, 31, a lawyer in New York who was president of HLS Lambda, a gay student rights organization, when she attended the law school. But Ms. Goad, who graduated in 2005, said, “Dean Kagan was trying to manage a very difficult situation, and it wasn’t an issue she could simply or easily resolve in our favor.”

Ms. Kagan did join more than half the faculty in January 2004 in signing an amicus brief when a coalition of law schools challenged Solomon in an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia.

Capt. Kyle Scherer, 25, who graduated from the law school last year and is now a military intelligence officer with the Army in Afghanistan, said by phone last month from Kabul that Ms. Kagan always supported students interested in the military. When recruiters came on campus, Ms. Kagan would send out e-mail messages, saying, in effect, “we distinguish between those who serve their country and the discriminatory policy under which they serve.”

Last year, when he was promoted from first lieutenant to captain in the Massachusetts Army National Guard, he invited her to the ceremony and gave her the honor of pinning his captain’s bars on his shoulder.