Supreme Court Diversity Essay

Our Supreme Court, considered the most diverse in its history, has six Catholics, three African Americans, three women, three Jews, two Italian Americans, and the first Hispanic justices. While we have gender, racial, and religious diversity, however, all nine justices on the Roberts Court graduated from Yale and Harvard Law School. They all followed a narrow and similar professional career path. Our current bench not only lacks educational diversity, but also experience in politics, criminal defense, and as solo practitioners. For a well reflected understanding of the communities the Supreme Court serves, educational and professional diversity on the Supreme Court is imperative.
Harvard and Yale Law School, among the top three law schools

in the US, do not reflect the diverse voices of the US population.

While Yale and Harvard Law School graduates are the most intellectually qualified to be on our Supreme Court, they predominately represent the upper-class. While Harvard Law School (HLS) has programs such as the Low Income Protection plan which works towards providing accepted low-income students with need-based financial aid, but still, 67 percent of HLS’s student body comes from the top 20 percent of the population. Furthermore, median family income of the student body is approximately $168,000 per year; and 15 percent come from the top one percent ($630,000 or more per year). Only 1.8 percent of the students are from the “poor” sector of society. In Harvard Law School’s entering class of 2016, out of the 563 students who matriculated, 49.6 percent were white whereas 33.5 percent made the total minority - 9.4 percent were of Hispanic ethnicity, 12 percent Asian, 7.6 percent African American or Black, and 0.1 percent American Indian or Alaska native. Comparatively, the median parent income of a Yale Law School student is approximately $192,600 per year; students from the top one percent make up to 19 percent of the student body, 69 percent from the top fifth percent and 2.1 percent from the “poor” sector of

society. In 2016, out of the 210 students who matriculated, 58.9 were white and 33.5 percent were minorities - 9 percent Hispanic, 12.6 percent Asian, and 7.3 percent African American or Black. HLS students are not surrounded by individuals from divergent social classes which contributes to lack of exposure to alternative viewpoints and deprives one of empathy. Diversity is imperative as it makes one sensitive to other socioeconomic and race struggles. The justices of our Supreme Court represent our diverse nation, yet, their educational background at such homogenous law schools contributes to their detachment from the lives of our racially, culturally, and economically diverse population. By electing judges with the same intellectual level but with divergent educational backgrounds, our Supreme Court would be able to represent different socioeconomic statuses, thus bringing an alternative perspective to the decisions.