Should Obama’s Supreme Court Choice be Non-Ivy League and Non-Northeast?

[The Straight Story]

Should Obama’s Supreme Court Choice be Non-Ivy League and Non-Northeast?
Monday, May 03, 2010

In addition to weighing the ideological, gender, ethnic and religious composition of the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps President Barack Obama should consider one more qualification while deciding on a replacement for Justice John Paul Stevens: choosing someone who is not an Ivy League-educated Northeasterner.

“Not since the Allegheny Mountains (ranging through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia) were the western frontier of the newly created United States has the high court’s membership been so concentrated,” wrote the Associated Press’ Mark Sherman of the court’s justices, all of whom have strong connections with New York, Boston, New Jersey or Washington, DC.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who has already announced his retirement, is the only one of the nine current sitting members of the Supreme Court who did not earn his or her law degree at an Ivy League school. Stevens attended Northwestern. Besides Stevens, the only Justices of the last fourteen who were not Ivy League were William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor, both of whom graduated from Stanford Law School in 1952.

"The impetus to appoint someone from the West is a really good one,” says Roy Englert, a Washington lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. “Geographical diversity is important on the court. Do you really want water rights issues decided by people from Amtrak’s Northeast corridor?”

http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/Should_Obamas_Supreme_Court_Choice_be_Non_Ivy_League_and_Non_Northeast_100503

[Demeter]

1. What, You Don't Want a Liberal?

You want everything decided by followers of BFEE, corporatists like Rehnquist and O'Connor?

Maybe a graduate of Regents College?

Or perhaps an online degree?

[The Straight Story]

2. We need diversity, maybe someone from Montana - and they have to be short

:)

[FSogol]

3. and a left-handed albino or Inuit Presbyterian who got her law degree at night school

;-)

[brendan120678]

4. I certainly wouldn't mind a jurist from...

a non-Ivy League school, as long as they are qualified and intelligent.
The Ivy Leagues certainly don't have a monopoly on brains, as much as they may like to think they do.

I've known more dumb Ivy League lawyers than smart ones, and most of the more intelligent lawyers I know came from second- and third-tier law schools.

[MattBaggins]

5. No... the rest of the country needs us New Yorkers to lead you.

The rest of the country are like little children to us. An occasional pat on the head and off to bed.

[saltpoint]

6. I see your point. But I think the demographic in the country which

is distrustful and dismissive of scientists and intellectuals and "them schools back east" should apologize to the nation as a whole for pretending that smart doesn't count and that smart is zipcode selective. Seems as if there are smart folks just about anywhere. Not many of them are Republicans, of course.

If Obama selects a good nominee that person deserves fair consideration whether he or she is from back east or out west or someplace else.

[WinkyDink]

7. I fail to see how one bias is preferable to another.

[Arkana]

8. Yes, we wouldn't want some educated at those HORRIBLE, AWFUL Ivy League institutions.

:sarcasm:

[Brickbat]

9. There are all kinds of diversity,

and class is an important one to remember, IMO.