I find it far more disturbing that none of the current sitting justices has ever presided over an actual trial.

Sotomayor's stint as Asst NY DA should mitigate that problem.

Diversity, shmiversity. Every recent appointee has been a graduate of Harvard or Yale Law. It's not that graduates of Harvard and Yale Law aren't intelligent people (that's a subject for another day). It's that being that restrictive effectively delegates the chore of narrowing the pool from which Supreme Court Justices are drawn to the admissions departments of two law schools.

Grads under these conditions would seem not to take the trajectory through benches in lower courts. The result of such is rulings that have at best a tenuous connection with the real world.

Of course, given the confirmation process, how would somone with an actual trial history get confirmed?

I find it far more disturbing that none of the current sitting justices has ever presided over an actual trial.

But AT LEAST the weren't dumb enough to say that the courts are were policy is made on tape, or should I be happy because she is honest.

Sotomayor: 'I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male'...

Now, what would be said if say, Roberts ahd said a line like that.... replacing "White male" for "black female', eh?

It's less true but still incredibly helpful for prestige policy slots, whether we're talking National Security Council or deputy undersecretary appointments, Hill committee staff, and the like.

More interestingly, none of the current Justices graduated from a public university or law school. And every single one of them served as U.S. appellate judges first, making this the first Court so comprised.

Diversity, shmiversity. Every recent appointee has been a graduate of Harvard or Yale Law. It's not that graduates of Harvard and Yale Law aren't intelligent people (that's a subject for another day). It's that being that restrictive effectively delegates the chore of narrowing the pool from which Supreme Court Justices are drawn to the admissions departments of two law schools.

There are lots of intelligent people who didn't get law degrees from Harvard or Yale; there are lots of intelligent people who've never been U. S. appellate court judges. The present standards are pretty darned narrow, unnecessarily so IMO.

I wonder if this isn't yet another example of the designer jeans phenomenon. It's not there aren't good jeans that aren't branded. It's that the shoppers either don't have the ability to evaluate what's good or bad on their own or don't have the confidence in their ability to evaluate.