Aside from the political controversy about replacing Scalia, the court reflects an intellectual bias rarely considered.

We consider bias in terms of race, religion or sex, but there is an intellectual bias when we consider different people with the same education background.  If we ask ten people about history and they all had the same professor are we really getting any  diversity of opinion.

The current Supreme Court has five Catholics and three Jews- no Protestants of any denomination.  Scalia had added one more Catholic.  This is a stunning lack of diversity in a country that is only 20% Catholic and less than 2% Jewish.

Not that affirmative action should apply to the courts; we should be more interested in their intellectual competence. Yet every justice went to either Harvard or Yale to study law with the exception of Ruth Ginsberg who went to Columbia.  There are wide differences of opinions  within the alumni of any of these schools, but there remains a different dynamic or culture to be considered from lawyers trained at one of our many fine state schools.

In a nation obsessed with diversity in so many areas it is worth noting how one of our most influential political institutions is so totally lacking in the important areas of religious and intellectual diversity

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