True Diversity

"We're missing a huge amount of diversity on the bench," she said, and not just racial or gender diversity. It bothers her that judges rarely come to the bench from the defense bar, from civil rights experience, or from solo or small practices. She stressed that she did not think a more diverse bench would necessarily decide cases differently. "None of us speak in one voice." Instead, enabling the public to see their own backgrounds reflected in the judiciary would "give the public more confidence" that they are getting a fair hearing.

-- Justice Sotomayor

The concern of a few comments over at Volokh Conspiracy et. al. that the end of the filibuster will lead to a bunch of ideological extreme hacks is a bit amusing. One conservative commentator, who has no love of Obama et. al., cynically replied that given the nature of things no nominee is likely to be "extreme" -- there is a limited realistic pool of Ivy league insiders. Given the make-up of the Supreme Court, putting aside a majority coming from NY (four) and NJ (Alito), hard to deny that on some level.

It's good to look big picture and even with three women etc., a Court with a bunch of mostly establishment (if not all coming from elite backgrounds) appellate judges (Kagan an exception) with a clear prosecutor leaning (even Sotomayor worked as one) is on some level not diverse. Thanks Obama for Sotomayor.