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HIDDEN NEWS: WHEN JUSTICE STEVENS RETIRES, THERE WILL BE NO PROTESTANTS ON THE SUPREME COURT
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate - When Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 89, retires-and he's expected to in the next year or so-there will be no Protestant left on the highest court in the land. . .
Popular opinion once held that even one Catholic was too many on the court. Today there are six. But would anyone even notice if Obama appointed a seventh to replace Stevens? Once upon a time, there was an outright religious litmus test for Supreme Court appointees. Today religion is almost irrelevant in appointing new justices.
All of which raises a question: Are the days of caring about religious diversity on the high court behind us? Or is it merely that the days of talking about it openly are behind us?
We generally don't talk much about religion and the Supreme Court. We talk about the need for race and gender diversity on the court in brave, sweeping pronouncements: The court needs more women, we say, or more Asians, or more gay and disabled people. Because all those things will impact the law. But when it comes to talking about religious diversity, it happens in whispers, if at all. Because it might impact the law. For a small handful of Americans, the fact that six of the nine justices on the current court are Catholics is an underreported national scandal. But for most, it's just quirky news.
Popular opinion once held that even one Catholic was too many on the court. Today there are six. But would anyone even notice if Obama appointed a seventh to replace Stevens? Once upon a time, there was an outright religious litmus test for Supreme Court appointees. Today religion is almost irrelevant in appointing new justices.
All of which raises a question: Are the days of caring about religious diversity on the high court behind us? Or is it merely that the days of talking about it openly are behind us?
We generally don't talk much about religion and the Supreme Court. We talk about the need for race and gender diversity on the court in brave, sweeping pronouncements: The court needs more women, we say, or more Asians, or more gay and disabled people. Because all those things will impact the law. But when it comes to talking about religious diversity, it happens in whispers, if at all. Because it might impact the law. For a small handful of Americans, the fact that six of the nine justices on the current court are Catholics is an underreported national scandal. But for most, it's just quirky news.
Labels: RELIGION, SUPREME COURT
2 Comments:
Think people would care if six were muslims - or mormons?
No national scandal certainly, but definitely something more than "quirky." Someone would be doing the country a service by making a serious attempt to understand how the Court came to be deeply divided in this way - five Catholic conservatives v. two Jews, a (hopefully) wise Latina, and an old-fashioned, free-thinking, made-in-America Protestant.
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