Saturday, October 24, 2009
Harvard Shield
For those making out their law school applications and dreaming of sitting on the highest court in the land someday, the list of possible destinations might as well be limited to three choices: Harvard, Yale, or Columbia University. According to a new Congressional Research Service report, almost half of all justices to the U.S. Supreme Court over the past 100 years received their law degrees from one of these premier universities. More recently, over half of the Supreme Court at any one time since 1988 has been made up of Harvard, Yale or Columbia alumni. Of the last 20 Supreme Court appointees, going back 51 years, nine attended Harvard and six attended Yale.
Harvard is currently in the lead with four alums: Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia. Yale counts three of its own—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Columbia has Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The “black sheep” of the present court is John Paul Stevens, who graduated from Northwestern University’s law school in 1947. Stevens is also the only one of the last eleven male Justices who did attend Harvard or Yale.
Apparently the Yale-Harvard advantage also works for presidents of the United States. The last president who was not a Yale or Harvard alumnus was Ronald Reagan.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Legal Education, 1789-2009 (pages 29-30) (by Susan Navarro Smelcer, Congressional Research Service) (PDF)
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