Did you know there are no Protestants on the Supreme Court?

It wouldn't even cross my mind to question the religious affiliation of a judge. Honest question: why is religion is a requirement or even something of public knowledge when it comes to a Supreme Court judge? Shouldn't that be irrelevant?

The same could be said for sex and race, correct?

I knew all of that and I think it's just a temporary anomaly for now, as far as religion goes. Maybe it's a function of the more recent efforts to include a more ethnically diverse court ... when you have an Italian Justice (Scalia, the first) and a Latina Justice, you're going to tilt toward more Catholics. On the other hand, you'd expect (in general) that a back Justice would be Protestant, not Catholic ... but Thomas is Catholic.

It will balance out eventually.

The tilt toward Harvard and Yale, though ... I don't know. Good luck with that.

I'd love it of religion never played any part in any court.

According to Wikipedia the majority of Americans are Protestant.

That should be reflected somewhere in the court. It is really odd it is not.

It makes this boring old lower-middle class evangelical white girl really happy to see the diversity of this country reflected in halls of power of all sorts. So while I don't think they should be chosen on that basis, I find it to be a sign of progress when the best candidates for the job are also candidates that have an opportunity to contribute to the diversity of the office. So if Srinivasan or Nguyen or another candidate who would increase the diversity of the Court happens to rise to the top of the heap, I would consider that a positive thing.

Talking about the religious affiliation (or atheism) of justices doesn't necessarily mean that religion is part of the court.

We talk about the race, ethnicity, and sex of candidates for SC justice.

I think some may be forgetting that for too long the Supreme Court reflected the anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism of the country. We had many, many all-Protestant or majority-Protestant courts. That doesn't reflect the country. 

It took 60 years to get the first Catholic justice...then only six Catholics in the next 150 years...then - boom! - six Catholics in the same group. And not liberal, Democratic, socially justice-ie Catholics (which is the world I grew up in); five of them are (with Scalia) very conservative Catholics, including a black arch-conservative Catholic. (A rare bird, that.) In my circles, there has been much discussion about it. 

And I agree that the Ivy League pedigree will be the last to fall...if ever. 

The OP addressed religion as did grinningcat. I did not read any of the other posts before posting and somewhere someone threw in gender and race so I did not address them because at the point I posted they were not on the table for me.

Gender and race are pretty evident, all you have to do is look and you can see any inequality. But things like religion and sexual orientation are not. You would have to research the person, invade their privacy to find these things.

If you read and comprehend what grinningcat said you will realize that she questioned why religion was relevant. And I agreed with that.

The OP was about the unequal situation religionwise it did not address inequality in general.

Perhaps you should start a new thread to discuss general inequality.

Well IMO whether a prospective judge/justice comes from a certain socio-economic group or holds or doesn't hold particular religious beliefs shouldn't even be relevant. The key considerations are qualifications, personal qualities, relevant experience and whether they're able to act impartially, independently and fairly.

However, this did make me go and check the courts website in New Zealand to see if there was anything reported about the background, religious beliefs etc held by our judges. According to the most recent census (2013) 31% of all judges say they hold no religious beliefs, 20% are Catholic, roughly 40% Protestant and the remainder are other religion. I thought this was pretty similar to the results for the general population where 41% said no religious beliefs, 13% are Catholic, 36% Protestant, 2.11% Hindu, 1.5% Buddhist, 1.18 Islam and the rest are 'other religion' or don't want to say.

I did, actually.

A little geographic diversity might be a good thing. Six of the justices are from the Northeast.

 

Where did I say I was resentful?  It is something that should be taken into consideration when selecting the next justice.

I am totally cracking up here at the folks that constantly whine about gender and race equality, then they say this is the one time it doesn't matter!