MODERNIZING THE SUPREME COURT

President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to The Supreme Court nomination illustrates the narrow band of Supreme Court experience. The United States has a population of well over three hundred million, but the Supreme Court looks as if it judges a nation the size of Spain.

3 of the justices will be Jews and 6 Catholics. No Protestants, Buddhists, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians.

When we consider America’s variety of towns and cities – contemplate that before their appointments, our Supreme Court justices lived in:

Metro Boston (2);
Buffalo;
Chicago (2);
metro District of Columbia (5);
Jefferson City, MO;
Long Beach, IN;
Italy somewhere to write a thesis;
New York City (4);
New Jersey towns (5);
Pin Point Georgia;
Sacramento; '
San Francisco (2).

Kagan lived in upper Manhattan, Sotomayor in the Bronx and Greenwich Village, Ginsberg in Brooklyn, and Scalia in Queens.

4 of the 9 with connections to one city. I might try humor and say an associate justice has not lived in Provo, Utah since 1922, and that certainly illustrates the court’s lack of regional diversity.

America has more than 200 law schools. The justices studied at three: Columbia Law School (1); Harvard Law School (6); Yale Law School (3). The professors and students of these 200 plus law schools teach and study the same law.

Thousands of colleges dot America from sea to shining sea. The justices earned university degrees at --

College of the Holy Cross;
Cornell;
Georgetown;
Harvard;
London School of Economics;
Oxford (2);
Princeton (3);
Stanford (2).


THE CALL TO ACTION

The Kagan nomination to the Supreme Court illustrates the need to modernize the Supreme Court. A country of 300 million needs more than 9 justices.

A constitutional amendment should require one justice from each of the 13 judicial districts, plus 3 at-large justices and a chief justice for a total of 17 justices.

8 should be men; 8 women, and a toss of a coin should determine in the beginning which seats will start with men justices and which will start with women justices and then alternate back and forth through the years. This means more men or more women justices might serve on the court at any given moment; however, in the long view of time the gender composition numbers will add up roughly equal.

An appointment to the Supreme Court should not last a lifetime. It should last to the age of 86 at most.

The chief justice's gender should alternate through the years as well.