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The confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh reinforces the elitism of the nine.
Even before the retirement of Anthony Kennedy this summer, all justices had attended either Harvard or Yale law school. But with the addition of Kavanaugh, the high court passed a new marker of exclusivity: For the first time ever, a majority of the sitting justices once served as Supreme Court law clerks.
This amounts to more than a peculiar fact of biography. It demonstrates how narrow and selective the path to the Supreme Court has become. Most of these justices have emerged from insular, privileged backgrounds in the meritocracy. The two most recent justices, Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, attended the same preparatory school in suburban Washington, and Chief Justice John Roberts himself graduated from a prep boarding school in northern Indiana.
Appointed for life, justices like Kavanaugh, who is only 53, are in a position to shape the nation's law for decades. Among the controversies the justices are likely to resolve in coming years are those testing partisan gerrymanders and voting districts; abortion rights and health care; and the reach of environmental, consumer and other regulatory protections.
But unlike some of the litigants who come before the high court, the majority has simply not faced economic hardship or discrimination in their adult lives.
Sonia Sotomayor, who became the first Latina justice in 2009, gave voice to her distinct experience in a 2014 affirmative action case. She referred in a dissenting opinion to the debilitating effects of discrimination.
"Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: 'I do not belong here,'" Sotomayor wrote.
Also: How John Roberts will manage the Supreme Court's conservative majority
