“Not since the Allegheny Mountains (ranging through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia) were the western frontier of the newly created United States has the high court’s membership been so concentrated,” wrote the Associated Press’ Mark Sherman of the court’s justices, all of whom have strong connections with New York, Boston, New Jersey or Washington, DC.

 

Justice John Paul Stevens, who has already announced his retirement, is the only one of the nine current sitting members of the Supreme Court who did not earn his or her law degree at an Ivy League school. Stevens attended Northwestern. Besides Stevens, the only Justices of the last fourteen who were not Ivy League were William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor, both of whom graduated from Stanford Law School in 1952.

 

"The impetus to appoint someone from the West is a really good one,” says Roy Englert, a Washington lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. “Geographical diversity is important on the court. Do you really want water rights issues decided by people from Amtrak’s Northeast corridor?”

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

I-95 High Court in Need of Some Regional Diversity (by Mark Sherman, Associated Press)