{"id":850,"date":"2009-06-09T08:12:31","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T14:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=850"},"modified":"2009-06-10T08:28:34","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T14:28:34","slug":"the-path-to-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/06\/09\/the-path-to-the-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"the path to the supreme court"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"My<\/a>In reporting on President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, the New York Times<\/a> noted that “President Obama may have broken with history by nominating a Latina to the Supreme Court, but in another respect he followed the path of almost every president in modern times who has successfully placed a justice: he chose a nominee groomed in an Ivy League university.”<\/p>\n

In a story titled, “An Ivy-Covered Path to the Supreme Court,” the Times<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n

If confirmed, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who attended Princeton University and Yale Law School, would sit alongside seven other Ivy League graduates on the court. Only Justice John Paul Stevens provides a measure of non-Ivy diversity, having graduated from the University of Chicago and the Northwestern University School of Law.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s short list studied at Ivy League institutions, either as undergraduates or law students.<\/p>\n

Whatever a nominee\u2019s origins might be, does attending the same institutions shape them and their views, even subtly? Critics suggest that elite universities shave off the differences in backgrounds and contribute to a kind of high-level groupthink.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A sociologist weighs in…<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is both a funneling and homogenizing effect from these schools,\u201d said G. William Domhoff, a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of \u201cWho Rules America?\u201d<\/p>\n

The effect, Professor Domhoff said, \u201cplays out in terms of social networks, cultural\/social capital, and a feeling of being part of the in-group.\u201d It is one of subtle conditioning \u2014 what Sam Rayburn, the former House speaker, meant when he famously said, \u201cIf you want to get along, go along.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even those who might not agree with Professor Domhoff\u2019s political critique would like to see more educational variety on the Supreme Court. Limiting the universe of nominees largely to Ivy League graduates \u201cis not good for the court or the country,\u201d said Linda L. Addison, the partner in charge of the New York office of Fulbright & Jaworski. \u201cEducational diversity would strengthen the court, as have racial, ethnic, gender and religious diversity.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And another…<\/p>\n

A president who attended a top university might gravitate toward those with a similar education. Stanley Aronowitz, a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, said the selection of Judge Sotomayor by a president who graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law was an example of \u201cpeople wanting to appoint themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Aronowitz, who has written extensively on questions of power, higher education and class, jokingly said, \u201cWhat I think he means by \u2018diversity\u2019 is Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In reporting on President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, the New York Times noted that “President Obama may have broken with history by nominating a Latina to the Supreme Court, but in another respect he followed the path of almost every president in modern times who has successfully placed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[34,154,39115],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-education","tag-political","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}