Eastern Snobbery at Work

With the looming retirement of USSC associate justice Anthony Kennedy, people are not just worried sick over the direction of the court, but who will be the "worthy" successor to Kennedy.

A lot of names are being bandied about. However, what is interesting is just how full of shit the "eastern elite" really is when it comes to nominees to the high court. See, for us who are the great unwashed outside of that bubble, we don't really care what law school a candidate goes to, especially when that "education" is decades in the past.

What matters to us is the experience, temperament, and quality of a judge, not whether he or she belongs to a certain clique.

Whether the person selected to the high court is a raving wingnut or somebody who tilts to the so-called "left" or is simply a "moderate" like Kennedy, it is immaterial to the eastern clique. Two things matter to those who will vote on the nominee--the U.S. Senate: the candidate must have been an appeals judge or a law professor at an Ivy League school, AND, even more important, that candidate MUST be a graduate of a hoity-toity Ivy League law school, specifically Harvard or Yale.

This is why somebody like Nevada governor Brian Sandoval hasn't a prayer in hell of being nominated to the high court.  He doesn't have that all-important Ivy League pedigree.

As I wrote over on Facebook:

Sandoval won't even be on any list. First of all, he wasn't and isn't an appeals judge, but, more important to the eastern clique, he doesn't possess an Ivy League law degree. The great majority of USSC justices have Ivy League credentials, especially either Yale or Harvard. His biggest "sin" is having a law degree from a despised STATE university, Ohio State University. This should show to the public how absolutely insulated the eastern clique is from the "great unwashed." Most people couldn't care less about which college a judicial candidate comes from, but to the eastern clique, that is practically all that matters.


And then I added the educational background of the current court lineup:

Sotomayor--Yale
Alito--Yale
Thomas--Yale
Ginsburg--Columbia
Kennedy--Harvard
Gorsuch--Harvard
Kagan--Harvard
Breyer--Harvard
Roberts--Harvard

ALL have Ivy League law degrees. Ginsburg started at Harvard Law and finished at Columbia.

There is this notion by the eastern elites that only an Ivy League degree confers any kind of prestige or legal knowledge by a candidate. Considering the numerous shitty decisions by the high court in recent years, the last twenty certainly, the Ivy League "requirement" of high court nominees should be seriously reconsidered.