Litigation

Scholar: Lack of Supreme Diversity ?Unhealthy?

By Peter Hardin

A respected scholar who has served in the Justice Department is pressing Congress to bring more diversity, in terms of geography and background, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Professor emeritus Daniel Meador of the University of Virginia judged the current situation “unhealthy,” according to a letter he wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, as reported by Tony Mauro in The Blog of Legal Times:

“In some important respects, the current membership is the least diverse in the Court?s history, a situation that is unhealthy for the governance of the country, both politically and jurisprudentially.”

Meador, who was an assistant attorney general in President Carter’s Justice Department, noted that all but one of the justices comes from the eastern United States, that all studied at Ivy League schools, and that none have held elective or legislative office.

“An institution that makes decisions as important as the Supreme Court does, affecting the lives of all Americans, needs to be more reflective of the nation as a whole and to have among its decision makers persons of more varied backgrounds and of broader experiences in public life,” he wrote. He suggested steps the Judiciary Committee could take to achieve greater diversity on the court.

Meador once clerked for Justice Hugo Black.

Full post as published by The Gavel on November 17, 2010 (boomark / email).