Re-examining a past issue, DL discusses the value of having three women on the Supreme Court, two of them (along with Kennedy) on C-SPAN tonight. This seems to me akin to the logic of the importance of women on juries, quoted here respecting federal trials, the original written before Kagan was born:
The thought is that the factors which tend to influence the action of women are the same as those which influence the action of men -- personality, background, economic status -- and not sex. Yet it is not enough to say that women when sitting as jurors neither act nor tend to act as a class. Men likewise do not act as a class. But, if the shoe were on the other foot, who would claim that a jury was truly representative of the community if all men were intentionally and systematically excluded from the panel? The truth is that the two sexes are not fungible; a community made up exclusively of one is different from a community composed of both; the subtle interplay of influence one on the other is among the imponderables. To insulate the courtroom from either may not, in a given case, make an iota of difference. Yet a flavor, a distinct quality, is lost if either sex is excluded. The exclusion of one may indeed make the jury less representative of the community than would be true if an economic or racial group were excluded.
Studies on the point were cited in the 1970s opinion here. A judge, like a juror, has the responsibility of weighing facts with various perspectives helpful here as well. Sex is one such perspective that should be fairly represented; not the only one surely. In that respect, the Supreme Court -- by religion (six Catholics, though of at least three varieties, three Jews, all basically of the liberal/probably largely secular, variety), background, experience, etc. -- is still unbalanced.
It's nice that there are three women there, but the unbalanced representation of people from mostly elitist backgrounds et. al. (down to the number from the New York City greater area, a majority in itself if you toss in Alito) -- which will get less coverage -- not so much.