The ruling class and the Supreme Court
As President Biden is poised to deliver on his campaign promise to nominate a Black woman jurist to the United States Supreme Court, a predictable chorus of naysayers, intent on waging a narrow and ahistorical campaign against identity politics, has taken to the airwaves and editorial pages to protest. These criticisms largely ignore the fact that the United States Supreme Court has and continues to be dominated by a ruling class of justices who share very little in life experience with the American people most significantly impacted by their decisions.
The problem certainly doesn't begin and end with the court's racial composition, but it is obvious the disparities here are stark. In the history of the Supreme Court, 115 individuals have served as justices - 108 of these have been white males. This longstanding pattern has so altered our collective consciousness regarding what a justice should be that concerns over identity politics surface only when the nominee is not a white male - an unconscious bias acquired throughout a long history of societal racism and sexism.
Regarding many other aspects of identity, most notably socioeconomic background, there also exists a dangerous blind spot. Take all the criticism leveled against Biden's expressed choice to nominate a Black woman - where were those same voices when former President Trump nominated two justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both graduates of the same elite Georgetown Preparatory School? There are 23,882 public high schools and 2,845 private high schools in the United States - it is difficult to argue we live in a meritocratic society when two out of nine sitting Supreme Court justices are graduates of the same exclusive private high school. President Trump's nominations appeared also to draw from a predetermined demographic group, consisting of the scions of well-connected Washington insiders, yet that hardly drew any notice.
Ask yourself whether you see any of your own family's journey reflected in the paths of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh? Justice Gorsuch's mother, Anne M. Gorsuch, served as the first female Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan. Everett Edward Kavanaugh, the father of Justice Kavanaugh, was a Washington D.C. lobbyist and lawyer who would go on to serve as the president and CEO of the Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association until his retirement in 2005. While the median household income was $67,521 in 2020, a decrease of 2.9 percent from the previous year, tuition at the Georgetown Preparatory School is $39,385 for day students and a jaw-dropping $63,800 for those who reside at the school.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-ruling-class-and-the-supreme-court/ar-AATvZ5x
