14 years younger, but that is a good consideration. The reason I think Hillary and Obama could confer on a post-election pick is because they wouldn't want to wait even longer to have a replacement on the court.

im sure she would get info from him...like negatives, but shell still pick her person.

I would imagine Clinton would inherit the Obama Administration's entire pile of vetting files, for starters. While I don't think they'd work out having him nominate someone for her before late January (mainly because there's so much else that has to be done during that time period, and Congress is basically in recess anyway), I could see the two sections of staff who are/would be working on the nominations getting together so that she's able to nominate someone right away in February.

What a gutsy pick. Not.

Is there actually anything to this, or is it just a weird quirk? I get why Jewish people would be over-represented in law schools, and why Hindu/Muslim/atheist candidates would face an extremely high bar to be nominated let alone confirmed, (and why Harvard/Yale grads have a leg up) but is there any reason why Protestants would be underrepresented at any step on the path?

(Obviously it's already exceedingly dumb to try to and make a 9 person group accurately reflect the demographics of a nation - as has been pointed out repeatedly, implying that Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall are similar in any way beyond skin color is pretty insulting - but it'd be interesting if being a white, male, Protestant was actually hurting an individual's chances. Although I'd have to convinced pretty hard it's something other than weird dice rolls.)

I'm sure it's really just some random dumb luck (or bad luck, if you will), but the last Protestant to be raised to the Supreme Court was Justice David Souter in 1990. Though Harriet Miers, who Bush initially nominated for the seat that Justice Alito received, was Protestant as well. Part of it may have been an attempt to move away from the past - where almost everyone on the court was a Protestant (there were a smattering of Jews in the court's history before the 1990s - 5 - and Catholics before the 1980s - 6).

I sort of agree with it but at the same time your best young legal minds are going to end up at those schools.

Not necessarily. There are quite a bit of very good law schools across the country - I mean Stanford has been "tied" with Harvard for years in the US News rankings.

Well, of course, but these nominees and justices went to school in a time when Harvard and Yale dominated. Chicago rose up a bit, but with a focus on law and economics.

I think it is a fair prediction that the next generation of justices will be more academically diverse. Srinivasan is a Stanford alum. Paul Watford went to UCLA, etc. The problem is there are only 9 jobs and they don't have openings. The key for now is appointing diversified candidates at the appellate level so there is a more diverse set of potential SCOTUS nominees.

I would argue that it is self perpetuating cycle. Harvard and Yale are considered "dominate" because the Supreme Court is filled with those Justices. It doesn't actually match reality.

Just like with minority football head coaches, it starts much earlier in the process and it takes a while to "catch up", as long as the custom is to appoint federal judges who had supreme court and federal court of appeals clerkships.

Sotomayor's and Alito's clerks have come from a wide variety of law schools, though Kagan still goes almost exclusively with Harvard/Yale/Stanford - (23 out of 24). I don't have a strong feeling whether "diversity" is good there or not, especially since the makeup of those schools is getting more diverse. It's not like you get some richer life experience in three years at Michigan or Northwestern that's going to make you a better appellate judge. If you're elite and want to be in the federal judiciary or academia, those are the schools to go to, and everybody knows it. If you're not qualified to get in, you can "overcome" that, but it's an uphill battle.

Yes, that's the point Molson. We're in a different time than we were when the current justices were in school. It takes a while for the new batch of clerks to work their way into judgeships and/or academia.

As someone who attended an 'elite' (top 25) law school myself, I can tell you that the accepted idea of the 'top' is virtually meaningless. I agree that it takes a while to 'catch up', but I am glad that we are finally breaking free of the notion Harvard and Yale are where its at. For example, Robert Bork, who was incredibly brilliant, went to University of Chicago Law School, and no one thought he was less of an elite mind than anyone on the court in the 1980s or 90s (his legal views were unacceptable to the Democrats in Congress at the time).

No one is really arguing that point with you.

The point being is that people seem to believe that Harvard and Yale law schools were the barometers for clerks, Appellate Court Justices, Supreme Court Justices for time immemorial and now we're breaking out of it. It's actually quite a recent thing. Not that long ago (2005 to be specific), we had a court with two Justices from Stanford Law School and one from Northwestern Law School.

SCOTUS is really too small a sample size to conclude much. What's the distribution of alma maters across the federal judiciary?

This is from 2004... unfortunately I couldn't find anything more current. Harvard is by far #1 and Yale is #2, but you have more than a few with a substantial number on the federal bench (including University of Texas, Virginia, Michigan, Georgetown - all with at least 30). This is from district and appellate courts though.

Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog: Where Federal Judges Went to Law School

Identity politics aside, if Garland were nominated during Obama's first term, Republicans should have (that doesn't mean would have) viewed it as an attempt to find someone who is more accomplished than political. He's 100 times better than Kagan or Sotomayor. I'm a cynic, though. Even though the intellectual analysis of Obama's action here - essentially a compromise between the idea that a final-year president shouldn't make important appointments and that an appointment should be blindly partisan - seems positive, nothing these days is ever positive. Not even a small gesture is rewarded.

But if we want to analyze why so many judges are Jewish in that age group and older, remember that civil rights wasn't just for people of color. In most business and academic worlds prior to about 1975-80 if you were Jewish, you could only get so far. Jewish families often steered their children toward medical professions and the law, where those barriers didn't exist.

Without intending any personal attacks or implications as to what you think on the matter, that idea is horseshit. The Constitution does not have carve-outs based on term timing, and there have been multiple "final year" SCOTUS nominations in the past - including President Reagan's final year. The idea that somehow NOW it's a bridge too far, promulgated by Republicans invested in the de-legitimizing of America's first black president...well there is no intellectual honesty there. It is pure, naked politics.

I guarantee if Clinton wins and brings the Senate with her, the GOP will trip over themselves to confirm a moderate in the lame duck session rather than risk a liberal - and that will fly directly in the face of their "the people should get a say" screeching rhetoric.

Paragraph becomes a lot more true if you add "by the GOP Majority Congress." to the end.

funny ad about trying to get the Republican senators to meet with Garland:




edit: sorry took out link until I can find one that doesn't show my facebook page. But it shows every day people like a cook, cop, and surgeons who side with the Republican Senators who are not doing they job by meeting the nominee. shows what would happen if they did not do their jobs.

try this: https://vid.me/t/doyourjob

This didn't seem like quite worthy of its own thread, but I know that there are some folks on this board who enjoy a good discussion about textualism and plain meaning and strict construction and the like.

This morning, the Court issued an opinion that brings that down to its most distilled essence: a textualist argument over the meaning of a single letter:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...9-863_6jgm.pdf

Interesting alignment. Gorsuch, Barrett, and Thomas joined the three liberals.

When this was bumped I assumed Breyer retired, so a little disappointed.

it is kind of a big letter, tho

Thanks for the link, albion. I always find it interesting when a case produces these kinds of alignments among the justices.

I agree. Really interesting look at how law is parsed.

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