Among the responses General Kagan gave to Senate Judiciary Committee members is an interesting set of answers to Ranking Member Senator Sessions:

a. Is it appropriate to rely on legislative history if such legislative history is available from only one house of Congress?
Response:
I am not aware of any Supreme Court precedent suggesting that the Court may not consider legislative history from only one House of Congress. But in considering legislative history as evidence of what Congress meant when it enacted the statute, the breadth of the legislative history is relevant to its value.
b. In looking to legislative history, is it appropriate to look at only committee reports and other formal documents, or is it appropriate to look at floor debates, committee meeting debates, hearing transcripts and other legislative materials?
Response:
Floor debates, committee meeting debates, hearing transcripts, and other legislative materials can be relevant sources of legislative history. But the Court should carefully consider the reliability of such materials as evidence of congressional intent.
c. When looking at committee reports, is the report relevant only to the extent it represents the views of those who voted for the legislation in committee, or must the courts also look to the views of those who did not vote for the bill in committee, but did vote for the bill’s final passage?
Response:
A court considering legislative history typically will look to committee reports, but may also look to other materials, including statements of Members of Congress who voted against the legislation in committee but voted in favor of the bill’s final passage. The question, with respect to all such materials, is whether they reliably indicate Congress’s intent in enacting a statute.
d. In looking at floor debates, is it necessary to compare what a member of Congress said on the floor with his final vote on the legislation to determine its relevance?
Response:
The weight to be given to a particular floor statement depends on the context, including the speaker’s other statements and votes.
e. Is it permissible for the courts to assess the veracity of statements in legislative history, or must the courts simply accept these statements as the true intentions of the legislature?
Response:
The weight to be given to a particular statement in the legislative history depends on the context, including other statements in the legislative history that express a contrary view.
f. In his dissent in Lane v. Pena, 518 U.S. 187 (1996), Justice Stevens wrote that “a rule that refuses to accept guidance from relevant and reliable legislative history, does not facilitate — indeed, actually obstructs — the neutral performance of the Court’s task of carrying out the will of Congress.”
i. Do you agree with Justice Stevens’ statement?
Response:
I am not familiar with the context of Justice Stevens’ statement. I believe, as I indicated to Senator Franken, that when the text of a statute is ambiguous, legislative history can be a valuable source of evidence of the meaning that Congress intended to give a particular statutory provision.
ii. Do you think it is a court’s task in statutory construction to “carry out the will of Congress,” or is it a court’s task to interpret the meaning of the text of legislation, leaving it to Congress to clearly express its will in that text?
Response:
The role of a court is to determine Congress’s intent in enacting a statute. Where the text of the statute is clear, that is the end of the matter, because that is the best evidence of Congress’s intent. Where the text is ambiguous, it is the job of the court to determine what Congress meant by looking to other legal sources, such as the statute’s structure, title, context, and legislative history.
g. Justice Scalia critiqued the practice of looking to legislative history in Conroy v. Aniskoff, 507 U.S. 511, 519 (1993), saying: “The greatest defect of legislative history is its illegitimacy. We are governed by laws, not by the intentions of legislators. As the Court said in 1844: ‘The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself. . . .’ But not the least of the defects of legislative history is its indeterminacy. If one were to search for an interpretive technique that, on the whole, was more likely to confuse than to clarify, one could hardly find a more promising candidate than legislative history.”
Do you agree that, given the diversity of viewpoints represented in the United States Congress, the legislative history of a statute could be a source of confusion?
Response:
In some cases, the legislative history of a statute may indeed be confusing. For that reason, among others, when the text of a statute is clear, the text should govern.