You went to a middle-of-the-road undergraduate school where the focus was more on tailgating in the stadium parking lot than schmoozing over brandy and cigars or whatever the ultra-elite do when they’re not conducting secret meetings to control the world. You got straight As, even though you decided to take the hardest classes. Your law school was decent, maybe ranking somewhere in the top 50 according to the Sacred Text of Law School Rankings. You are a great student and you’ve consistently placed in the top ten percent of your class. So maybe you’re not president of the Harvard Law Review, but by all accounts you are an excellent scholar and your student note is going to get published. The future looks bright, but there’s one legal job you’ll never have:
Supreme Court Justice.
It seems that in order to wear one of those awesome robes and enjoy lifetime employment hearing “Oyez” fifty times a day, attending an elite university is a virtual prerequisite. According to the New York Times:
In the history of the court, half of the 110 justices were undergraduates, graduate students or law students in the Ivy League; since 1950, the percentage is 70. From the beginning of the 20th century, every president who has seated a justice has picked at least one Ivy graduate. Four of the six justices on President Obama’s short list studied at Ivy League institutions, either as undergraduates or law students.
So it may not be totally necessary, but the numbers show that it definitely helps. It makes sense, I suppose. No one can cast doubt on the intellectual rigor of an Ivy League education, whether at the undergrad or law school level. And the selectivity of the admissions process ensure that only seriously smart cookies even walk in the doors of Harvard, Yale, and the rest. When asked about the dominance of elite college alumni who end up clerking for the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia recently justified the practice in his singularly poetic style by pointing out that you can’t “make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.” Regardless of the quality of teaching at these hallowed institutions, the competitive admissions process ensures that the lawyers coming out of those schools are the best and the brightest, because only the best and the brightest could have earned acceptance in the first place.
I can’t say that I disagree. But if diversity is an important enough goal that Presidents choose their SCOTUS nominees with an eye toward representing the population, shouldn’t we put more graduates of non-elite schools on the bench? I’m not talking about the diploma mills that run out of strip malls or online “criminal justice” certificates that you can buy your way into. What about a Justice from Duke, Notre Dame, U.C.L.A, or any of the other fine colleges our country has to offer? Oh sure, Justice Stevens hails from Northwestern and did his undergrad at University of Chicago but right now he sits alone on the bench among his ivied brethren.
On the other hand, when President Bush nominated Harriet Miers her J.D from Southern Methodist University met with no small degree of scorn. And I’m not trying to create a paean to mediocrity or argue that there is something wrong with exceptionalism. Lord knows I’m no anti-intellectual. But there are many people with razor-sharp wits and an astounding capacity for legal reasoning who didn’t happen to graduate from an Ivy League school. I do worry about the insulating nature of life in the highest of Ivory Towers and the socializing effect that these school might have. I worry about making this argument without sounding like a jealous schlub working out my own insecurities on the internet. Trying to convince people that Supreme Court Justices shouldn’t come from the universally-recognized finest schools in the country is an uphill battle, and framed in those terms the position is untenable. But the idea that Justices from outside the elite university system would be good for the judicial system is one I just can’t shake.
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I’ve never been to law school, but I have to say I agree with your sense of things.
I went to Stanford for one year undergraduate and then got depressed and went back home to recover. I eventually finished out my undergraduate schooling at a second rate (not even a first rate by the rankings) public school. To my surprise, I found that there were plenty of smart, interesting people there. Also, I found that in many classes I couldn’t just skate through; I did have to study hard and apply myself. (The honors society/junior achievement crowd I hung out with in high school all thought poorly about the local state school I ended up graduating from, incidentally.)
Ivy Leagues are centered around LSATs (or SATs in the case of undergraduates). My SATs were slightly lower than average for white males like myself–I suspect in part I got in to Stanford because of geographical diversity. I’m not sure if I feel as you do on this matter because I’m feeling sour grapes over not doing as well as some of the people I met there or if there is a more legitimate reason that is motivating me.
Perhaps it’s self-serving, but I do feel as if there are some legitimate reasons which rise above my axe to grind over SAT scores. There is a political side to law, and as in the case of politics per se, no one represents your interests better than yourself. It’s very unlikely that smart people can represent the interests of everyone as well as people who are from the various socioeconomic groups they claim to represent.
In fact, it’s very likely that smart people are in fact representing their best interests best. Take, for example, the sexual revolution as instantiated by the sex saturated movie and TV industry. Who benefits from the sexual revolution?
Smart people, for whatever reason, seem to be able to step around or over many of the land mines associated with the sexual revolution. But smart people can be very promiscuous, you say. They have affairs and get divorces like everyone else. Yes, true enough. But smart people don’t have five children from different fathers despite not being able to support any of them and having to give them all up to foster care. I work as a manager of an economy motel, and I’ve seen this situation. When I cut paychecks I’ve seen who has to pay child support (and for how many kids). Did the sexual revolution work for the housekeepers in this situation I’ve gotten to know?
But their lives might have turned out messed up and difficult, regardless. Might have been, yes. But might not have been had marriage been much more normative and living together and shacking up something not as socially acceptable as it is now.
The Supreme Court didn’t cause this, but they have protected the “rights” of pornographers and resisted attempts to legislate morals on the internet and elsewhere.
If we built a “user-friendly” world for people who weren’t the brightest of the bright, our world might look very different from how it is now. But groups almost always vote for what’s best for the group. Individuals can be exceptions to this rule, but with groups, almost never.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Stanford is a great school, to be sure. But other schools who might not rank as high can still have smart cookies work their way through. Standardized testing is a whole other issue. I suppose we need some objective measure of intelligence, but I’m not convinced the SAT/LSAT is it.
to describe the supreme court monopoly of the supreme court justice what did you expect from non Democracy..this blacklisted health professional knows that the twisting of knowledge in practically in all disciplines by the ivy league cartel has been slam dunk..does anyone ever beg to ask of the 235years of the American republic why for the pre 1980 history that the American government and corporate America was 80per cent debt free and when in debt it was succeded by paying off that debt in less than a decade.then it all changed with first the ivy league studded Reagan adminstration,junk bond and savings and loan colapse was alll ok because ivy leaguers made huge financial killing,one of the bush boys even wormed out of federal conviction,then bush 1 came in and read my lips “no new taxes”well not for the ivy leaguers ceo,goldman sachs started its huge pig out which still continue today with its 50per cent ivy league execs,then clinton where America has no vlaues when it comes to the convenince and profit of ivy leaguers,bush2 he sure as heck ddint send any ivy leaguers into combat just as profiteers and carpetbaggers,bush 2 with alcohol and cocaine damaged brains imagined that Islam is very much the same as Christianity except for Saddam Hussein and iran…now Obama to carry thetorch on to grease the palms of the ivy leagy alums,its 3trillion in deficits already and unmployment is above 9.5per cen,i gues the alums want a different merrcedes each day of the week..the ivy league is a cartel of God less,stupid,greedy,arrogant jack booters..they are on a course to sell america out to a few foreign natiosn which obama is promoting but will run short up comes up the next ivy league hoax and fraud and that Mit Romney for the White House in 2013 which will nail it dead America 100per cent foreign owned by 2020 except for the ivy league alums who will have stashd thier largess either in the usa or in foreign countries or both..isnt that sweet..they have a leg up on totalitarianist they do thier murdering over decades..romney will be the great white hope that how they will sell him..psst it only for the alums he will save.
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