Sensitive issues very seldom openly discussed about people in public office include religion, personal wealth and quality educational achievement. If you look at this blog as openly discussing these and other topics as being politically incorrect, you are probably a leftist minion.
There are many who claim that our public institutions should reflect America. So, at least half of the U. S. Congress, according to this viewpoint, should be made up of women. Arguments can be made on both sides, but does this belief extend to the highest court in the land, the United States Supreme Court? Not so — there is little on the court that reflects the demographics of the nation.
First, let us list the members of the Supreme Court, with the year confirmed and the President who nominated them.
Clarence Thomas — 1991, George H. W. Bush
Ruth Bader Ginsberg — 1993, Bill Clinton
Stephen Breyer — 1994, Bill Clinton
John Roberts (Chief Justice) — 2005, George W. Bush
Samuel Alito — 2006, George W. Bush
Sonia Sotomayor — 2009, Barack Obama
Elena Kagan — 2010, Barack Obama
Neil Gorsuch — 2017, Donald Trump
Brett Kavanaugh — 2018, Donald Trump
Overrepresented in this list are white men, none younger than Kavanaugh, who is 54, with Breyer who is 81. But given the history of the nation, that would be expected. Fully 91 of the 114 people who have been on the court have been white and older than the average age of the time they were seated.
Women, on the other hand, have been underrepresented. Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to be first, that in 1981. Since then, as seen in the list above, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan have joined the ladies, making their 1/3 notably less than the slightly more than half of the country’s inhabitants.
Other significant demographic groups have fared a little better. Around 13 % of the nation is African-American, which makes Clarence Thomas 11.1% of the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall was the first of his race to be elevated to a seat on the court, and Thomas took his “seat”.
Hispanics are a little worse off than African-Americans. Sonia Sotomayor makes up the same 11.1% of the Supreme Court, while Hispanics are about 17% of the nation’s population. She also is the first of her demographic to be seated on the court.
Religion is a touchy subject, for, according to the Constitution, no person shall be denied an office because of their faith (or lack of it). Yet today, of the nine justices, six are Roman Catholic and three are Jewish. Since Catholics are about 23% of religious adherents in America, their 66.7% presence on the Supreme Court gives that demographic representation far out of proportion to the population at large. Jews make up only around 2%, yet they account for 33.3% on the court, again far above a “fair” representation would be. So where to Protestants come in? With about 49% of Americans claiming to be Protestants, there are none on the court. The last Protestant to serve was John Paul Stevens, and he retired in 2010. With many liberals clamoring for representative bodies and members of administrations to be reflective of the people they serve, why aren’t there more voices raised to protest this lopsided religious picture of the highest court in our land?
Educational background is also one of the criteria for inclusion on the Supreme Court. With many fine schools of law in our nation, it seems odd that the various Presidents have limited their choices to only those from the so-called Ivy League schools. Four — Roberts, Breyer, Kagan and Gorsuch all received their law degree from Harvard. Another four — Thomas, Sotomayor, Alito and Kavanaugh went to Yale’s Law School. Ginsburg’s law degree came from Columbia. There is no doubt that there is rigorous training needed to be a competent justice, but there are some top tier law schools that must wonder why their graduates seem shut out of consideration. Just to name a few — Notre Dame, Stanford, Northwestern, University of Chicago — all of these have produced excellent lawyers over the years. Obviously, the court, as presently configured, is a small group of like-educated attorneys. Where is the outcry from those who want “diversity” as a virtue in any institution?
Would quotas make a difference in the decisions handed down by the Supreme Court? Perhaps what we should look for in such justices is fidelity to strictly interpreting the Constitution, which would be the original intent of the founders of the republic.
And yet — it is somewhat strange that the U. S. Supreme Court looks so little like the people in the nation it serves.