A New York Bloc on the Supreme Court

[groovedaddy]

(I don't know if like this. I suppose it shouldn't matter, as you want the best people no matter what. But this, combined with the tilt toward Ivey League law grads, particularly Harvard, just seems to be too slanted - gd)

The Supreme Court has some justices who are liberals and some who are conservatives. It has some who see themselves as strict constructionists and some who probably do not.

And then it has the justices who grew up riding the subway and the ones who grew up turning right on red.

It has the justice who was the treasurer of the Go-Getters Club at James Madison High School in Brooklyn. It has the justice who watched “Perry Mason” on television in a housing project in the Bronx and decided that the star defense lawyer was less important than the judge. It has the justice who took part in a junior military training program at Xavier High School in Manhattan and carried his rifle home on the train to Queens.

If the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court is confirmed, she would join three others in a distinct bloc. For the first time in the court’s history, said William Treanor, the dean of Fordham Law School, it would have four justices who grew up in New York City.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12newyorkers.html?th&emc=th

[markpkessinger]

1. There is no particular worldview by virtue of living in NYC

I think the concern over "too many New Yorkers" on the court quickly abates (or at least it should) when you consider just who the three (and likely soon to be four) justices are. As someone who has lived in NYC for the past 28 years, I can tell you that Scalia's Queens, Ginsberg's Brooklyn, Sotomayor's Bronx and Kagan's Upper West Side are worlds apart from one another culturally and politically, as indeed are those four persons. I would challenge anyone to find a major Constitutional issue that is likely to come before the court on which those four persons would vote as a bloc.