In One Respect—an Ivy League Education—Sotomayor Is Part of the In Crowd
Judge Sonia Sotomayor has told of feeling like an outsider during her college days at Princeton University. But if Sotomayor is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Yale law graduate would become part of an “in group” of eight Ivy League-educated justices.
Only Justice John Paul Stevens, who graduated from the University of Chicago and Northwestern law school, does not an Ivy League background, the New York Times reports.
Half of the 110 justices who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court have attended an Ivy League school, either as an undergraduate, graduate student or law student, the New York Times reports. Eighteen went to Harvard law, eight to Yale law, and six to Columbia. (Forty-four never went to law school in the days when it wasn’t a requirement.) Since 1950, 70 percent of the justices have been Ivy Leaguers.
University of California, Santa Cruz, sociology professor G. William Domhoff told the Times there is “a funneling and homogenizing effect from these schools.”
Domhoff, who wrote a book Who Rules America? told the newspaper that the effect “plays out in terms of social networks, cultural/social capital, and a feeling of being part of the in-group.”
The New York Times blog, The Choice, noted the story.
