| | Is anyone else disappointed with this nomination (from a non liberal/conservative point of view)?
I think it is terribly disappointing that we keep getting these Ivy League judges on the Supreme Court. Sure, Kagan has no "bench" experience, so in that aspect she is diverse. She is also female, which may be needed. But, she is still what at least 7 out of the other 8 are on the court: legal intellectuals. Frankly, I would have liked to have seen (and would like to see in the future) non-intellectuals grace the halls of the court again. There used to be a time when one did not have to go to an Ivy league law school to be on the court. Now, it is a prerequisite. And, I can't think of a nominee that would be a bigger intellectual than Kagan: law prof turned Harvard Law School Dean. But, I don't know the woman, so, maybe I'm wrong. | | | -- WenweiLai - 25 Jun 2010 | |
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< | Dan, I'm glad you posted that editorial. It ties in with my thoughts on something Rory said earlier. He wrote: | >
> | Dan, I'm glad you posted that editorial. It ties in with some thoughts I had on something Rory said earlier. He wrote: | | | If going to Yale or Harvard was a one-way ticket to the Supreme Court, I would have studied more for the LSAT. | |
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< | Obviously a diploma from one of these two schools isn't sufficient for a seat on the Court, but is it necessary? Right now, despite all our qualifications and potential, it looks like Columbia grads are virtually shut out of the Court, along with alums of every other school in the country, simply by virtue of not being Harvard or Yale grads. | >
> | Obviously a diploma from one of these two schools isn't sufficient for a seat on the Court, but is it necessary? Right now, it looks like Columbia grads are virtually shut out of the Court, along with alums from every other school in the country. Does this trend reflect the superior quality of the candidates produced by these two schools, or are grads of other institutions excluded simply by virtue of not being Harvard or Yale alums? If I had to guess, I'd say a little of both. | | | | |
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< | We aren't even talking about Ivy's now, just the two schools, so I don't think the issue is elitism, generally. I think the problem here, which Brooks is also addressing, involves the ramifications for society when opportunities follow only the narrow kinds of success that certain institutions recognize. You eliminate risk-takers disproportionately and thereby lose diversity and innovation. In the case of the Court, it may mean you're getting the best and the brightest, or it may mean you're simply getting the people who invested the most into proving they could do the one thing everyone accepted to a top law school can do-get a grade. Whatever the case, I think the near total domination of the Court by the Harvard and Yale brands alone represents a surrender to narrow and arbitrary institutional values. | >
> | But, we aren't even talking about Ivy's now, just the two schools, so I don't think the issue is elitism, generally. I think the problem here, which Brooks is also addressing, involves the ramifications for society when certain institutions recognize narrow measures of success and award opportunities accordingly. I believe the admissions committees of both schools have made a point to prove there is no template for getting in. Certainly no LSAT score will punch your ticket. Therefore, it's possible we have a representative sample within each class. | | | | |
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> | Nevertheless, even where the student bodies of the feeder schools reflect diverse viewpoints and experiences, you're still limiting your field of prospective justices by requiring a Harvard or Yale diploma. Moreover, you haven't begun to address Brooks' critique as it relates to the subset of potential justices within the set of all students at either school. Are risk-takers, innovators and other nonconformists being unwisely selected out of the process in favor of students who view their professors as bosses to be pleased? | | | | |
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< | I've been reading this post for a while, and have really enjoyed the discussion. I saw an article today in the New York Times about the changing demographics of the Supreme Court. I hadn't thought about it before, but there has been a pretty marked shift in the ethnic/religious composition on the court. What the article doesn't discuss, however, is the increasing lack of diversity in terms of educational/employment backgrounds (especially with regards where one attends school), which Rory has helpfully given statistics to support. | >
> | This leads into our earlier discourse on grades, but I will pull back here and simply say I'm not in favor of putting laypersons on the Court (don't read this as a ringing endorsement of the legal education system, just a vote that a prospective justice should have been actively involved in the legal profession); however, at the very least, the continued domination of the Court by the Harvard and Yale brands suggests narrow and arbitrary institutional values, rather than the preeminence of the graduates of those law schools, as impressive as they may be. | | | | |
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< | It seems as though we're moving from one extreme, racial/religious homogeneity, to another, educational homogeneity. The two are completely different and I don't mean to compare them, but the above article made me think of this. Just some food for thought - I'd love to hear what other people have to think about this. | >
> | -- BrookSutton - 28 Jun 2010 | | | | |
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< | -- DavidGoldin - 28 Jun 2010 | | | |
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