American Elites and the high court

[freepcrusher]

I've been looking at the backgrounds of people who have served on the supreme court and have found it interesting how there haven't been many people who are of a hereditary elite on the court.  Like look at the court of 70 years ago - basing it on the locations of where they grew up - Reed, Black, Vinson and Minton probably grew up in a very prole background. The only guy in the postwar period who I can really say grew up elite his whole life was John Paul Stevens.

Pre-WWII I'm not as sure as I don't know much about the court of that era. I assume Salmon Chase was a "Cradle to grave" elite given that he was the heir to Chase Manhattan Bank.

[Alben Barkley]

Also interesting how many have been Catholics and Jews considering how few presidents have been anything but WASPs.

[Dereich]

The Supreme Court has its own kind of elitism and bias. In terms of education, a Harvard or Yale education dramatically weighs the scale in favor of getting a SCOTUS clerkship and thus the inside track to getting on the court. All eight of the current SCOTUS went to one of these schools. While there's no denying that they're good schools, they're not dramatically better than the rest of the T14 schools,  which have either no SCOTUS justices (Cornell, Georgetown, NYU, Duke, Chicago) or up to two (all the others except Harvard, Yale, and Columbia). It matters because Harvard/Yale alumni statistically hire mostly Harvard/Yale clerks. Being a Supreme Court clerk puts you on the fast-track to Federal judgeships and thus the Supreme Court. Only Justice Thomas has spoken out on this and makes an effort to hire more diverse clerks.

The other big bias (and the two are connected!) is the regional bias. There have only ever been 5 justices from west of the Great Plains. By contrast, until Justice Scalia's death there was a current justice on the court for each New York City borough. This does matter! There are plenty of issues (particularly tribal, Federal land, and environmental issues) that most of the northeastern justices never had to deal with before they were on SCOTUS. By all accounts, this used to let Justices Rehnquist and especially O'Connor basically lead the court however they wanted on those issues during their times on the court as they had experience with those areas of law while the easterners did not. The education issue feeds into this one; west coast prospective law students are more likely to stick to Berkley and Stanford (two extremely good schools which are undeniably elite) than move across the country to go to Yale or Harvard. While this might be good for some areas of law, it puts the westerners at a major disadvantage for consideration to the SCOTUS.