Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have been speaking out about the vacancy and the job in general for a few days now. One issue that they’ve repeatedly mentioned is one that has been weighing on the minds of voters: The Justices, though there are eight of them, are not exactly diverse. They’re all Ivy League-educated, all but one of them are from one of the coasts, and none are Protestant.
In a piece rounding up the various statements made by Kagan and Sotomayor, the New York Times made note of all of these traits and their associated lack of diversity, then quoted Sotomayor as saying this:
The Supreme Court
is never going to be a melting pot reflective of the country. In most of our lifetimes, the court is only going to turn over one full circle.
Still, they both agree that the vacancy needs to be filled right away, so the diversity of the court will need to wait another round or so, if it is even ever expanded at all. Sotomayor explained, “There’s a few cases where you can see we ruled very, very, very narrowly, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.”
[image via screengrab]