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Forget religion, gender and sexuality, let's talk Ivy League Supreme Court bias
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has faced a lot of probing. There's somehow continued debate over her sexuality (a 50-year-old single woman? What's wrong with her?), her religion (she's Jewish, and if confirmed will make the court entirely non-Protestant) and, of course, her politics.
But the latest issue to worry pundits isn't the gender make up of our highest court or even how religious background affects the Justices' rulings. It seems that the court is just a bit too Ivy League for comfort.
Does diversity really matter if everyone's Harvard and Yale-educated? Can we not get a little Stanford up in this bitch?
If confirmed, Kagan will replace the only justice without a Harvard or Yale law background. And many are wondering why intellectual diversity isn't becoming of the same concern as diversity of religion, ethnicity and gender.
I get, I do — but I'm going to have to play devil's advocate here. We're drawing from the same exclusive, "elitist" community, and I get the argument that attending the same schools might mold similar ideologies.
But this is law school — help me out here, but isn't the law the law, no matter where you study?
There are certainly reputable programs outside Harvard and Yale (Michigan, University of Chicago, University of Virginia, and Texas — to name some non-Ivies), but I think there are probably worse things than staffing our highest court with the best and brightest — with graduates of the top two law programs in the nation.
Getting a law degree is just three years in a much longer life. Shouldn't we worry more about what people did with their degrees than where they got them? Diversifying for the sake of diversity has never struck me as a bright idea (cue the comments).
And doesn't assuming that everyone who went to Harvard and Yale are automatic cronies (Obama went to Harvard like Kagan), that they're the same "types" of people with the same beliefs and value systems amount to exactly what these critics are decrying?
Just sayin'.
So let me have it — do you find the Supreme Court's lack of educational diversity problematic? Or is the president just recruiting the cream of the crop?