Discrimination On The U.S. Supreme Court

It has often been said that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. We need a little diversity in our lives and a break from the routine.  The same can be said about losing the diversity of knowledge and diverse perspectives that people from other institutions can provide. The majority of the Supreme Court Judges should not all be Ivy League graduates.

Over the last several years, many have been focusing on ethnic and gender diversity as deciding factors for Supreme Court Nominees. I am of the opinion that Supreme Court decisions may be considered biased, due to their common Ivy League education. This amounts to what I would call educational discrimination, by limiting the Court to Ivy League Graduates. Some might also call it elitist.

The following applies to Kagan, just as it did to Sotomajor.

Obamas Appointment of Sotomayor Fails to Offer Educational Diversity to Court.

Sotomayor and Kagan do not offer true diversity to our Supreme Court. The potential power of Sotomayor’s diversity as a Latina Woman, from a disadvantaged background, loses its strength because her Yale Law degree does not offer educational diversity to the current mix of sitting Judges. Nor does Kagan's Harvard law degree. Once Sotomayor walked through the Gates of Princeton and then Yale Law School, she became educated by the same Professors that have educated the majority of our current Supreme Court Justices, and our Presidents. The same applies to Kagans Princeton to Harvard track.

Diversity in education is extremely important. We need to look for diversity in our ideas, and if our leaders are from the same educational background, they lose the original power of their ethnic and gender diversity. The ethnic and gender diversity many of our current leaders possess no longer brings a plethora of new ideas, only the same perspective they learned from their common Ivy League education. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Ones character is often developed by the education they receive.

One example of the common education problem is that a former lecturer at Yale, Judge Frank, who developed the philosophy of Legal Realism, has heavily influenced Yale’s Law School. Frank argued that Judges should not only look at the original intent of the Constitution, but they should also bring in outside influences, including their own experiences in order to determine the law. This negative interpretation has influenced both Conservatives and Liberals graduating from Yale. It has been said that Legal Realism has infested Yale Law School and turned lawyers into political activists. A generation of appointees with either a Harvard or Yale background has the potential to distort the proper interpretation of our Constitution. America needs to decentralize the power structure away from the Ivy League educated individual and gain from the knowledgeable and diverse perspectives that people from other institutions can provide. We should appoint Supreme Court Justices educated from amongst a wider group of Americas Universities.

Here is a list of where each Justice got their Law Degrees from:

Harvard

Chief Justice John Roberts
Anthony Kennedy
Antonin Scalia
Stephen Breyer
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Harvard, Columbia)

Yale

Samuel Alito – Yale JD 1975
David Souter
Clarence Thomas – Yale JD 1974
Sonia Sotomayor – Yale JD 1979

Northwestern Law School

Justice John Paul Stevens (retiring)

The Presidents we have elected for the last twenty years have, themselves, been Harvard or Yale educated. This has the potential to create an even more closed minded interpretation of our laws.

Yale – Bush Sr. – 4 years as president

Yale Law – Clinton – 8 years as president

Yale – Bush, Jr. – 8 Years as president

Harvard Law – Obama – current president (potentially 4-8 years)

When we consider that our Nation has potentially twenty – eight years of Presidential influence from these two Universities, as Americans, we should look long and hard at the influence Yale and Harvard have exerted on our nation’s policies. Barack Obama promised America Change, but he has continued the same discriminatory policy by appointing a Yale graduate over many qualified candidates that graduated from other top Colleges and Universities in America.

I think it is time to have, not only ethnic and gender diversity on the court, but educational diversity as well.