Adam Liptak quotes Supreme Court Associate Sonia Sotomayor’s wry observation:

“The Supreme Court is never going to be a melting pot reflective of the country,” Justice Sotomayor said. “In most of our lifetimes, the court is only going to turn over one full circle.”

There are only nine potential seats, and despite some superficial signs of “diversity,” such as the black seat being held by Clarence Thomas, it hasn’t worked out the way identitarian-obsessed progressives seem to think it should. The numbers don’t allow for accommodation of the identity politics flavor of the day, particularly when that’s an ever-changing goalpost, and nine isn’t enough to accommodate the vast array of identity groups. Why is there no morbidly obese justice? Where is the blind justice? Who can hear the deaf justice? Certainly not the Slovenian justice, who speaks English as a second language.

Granted, it’s remarkably homogeneous by most metrics today:

Justice Kagan, speaking on Wednesday at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said the court may suffer from what she called a “coastal perspective,” The Arizona Daily Star reported. (She is from New York City. As is Justice Sotomayor. As is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As was Justice Scalia. Between the four of them, they represented every borough but Staten Island.)

Justice Scalia made a similar point in a dissent last year. “Eight of them grew up in East and West Coast states,” Justice Scalia wrote of the court’s membership at the time. “Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between,” he added, referring to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is from Indiana.

What about President Obama’s outside the box nominee, Merrick Garland? Would he change things up?

On this score, Judge Garland would bring a dash of variety to the court, as he is from Chicago. But he has long worked in Washington, in the Justice Department and, for the past 19 years, on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In other ways, Judge Garland would not bring notable diversity to the Supreme Court.

He attended Harvard Law School, as did five of the current justices. (The other three went to Yale. Justice Ginsburg started at Harvard and graduated from Columbia.)

Judge Garland is Jewish, as are three of the current justices. (The other five are Roman Catholic.) In last year’s dissent, Justice Scalia, also Catholic, mused that his court included “not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one-quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination.”

What constitutes “diverity” when it comes to the Supremes? We have women, who notably haven’t always been overly concerned when denying a stay of a dubious execution of a possibly innocent or mentally retarded defendant. We have a black justice, who is no Thurgood Marshall. What about gay? Well, there are no openly gay judges, but if theories hold true, there most likely have been over the years, even if they didn’t tell us about it.

At any given moment, one flavor is argued to be the missing ingredient to a more representative court. Male or female. Black or white. Gay or straight. Harvard or Yale. Oh wait, not that. But should there be a lawyer from a third tier toilet? What about a non-lawyer, representing the views of those who know nothing about law, but feel that the law sucks and the Court perpetuates the suck?

Years ago, when JFK ran for the presidency, the contention was that Catholics should be shunned in government because they would serve the Pope rather than the people. Turns out that fear never came to pass, and it wasn’t a problem at all. The Supreme Court is now majority Catholic and they still held that the Equal Protection Clause includes the right of a gay couple to marry. You know who’s under-represented today? WASPs, atheists, pagans, Wiccans. Is the Court in need of a Wiccan?

Who does Justice Elena Kagan think should be on the Court?

At the judicial conference here on Friday, Justice Kagan suggested that prior judicial experience or other deep engagement with the law was desirable given the broad social issues the Supreme Court sometimes decides. In those cases, she said, “law has a kind of values feel to it.”

“Even in those cases, you have to understand that it’s still about law,” Justice Kagan said. “You don’t want a court of free-floating philosophers. You want a court of people who really care about law and are good at doing it and are experienced at doing it and who bring that worldview even to cases that involve matters of broad principle.”

So no free-floating philosophers? Well, that answers the question. But what Kagan didn’t say is more women, gays, blacks, Hispanics, or even a transgender justice.  Does she hate social justice?  Yet, the law still has a “values feel to it,” whatever that means. You would think a justice could express herself a bit more clearly.

Of course, if it were up to me, there would be someone with experience in the trenches as a criminal defense lawyer, though to be fair, that hasn’t always worked out any better than a black justice. As it turns out, almost all the identitarian crap people cry about is meaningless when it comes to legal ideology. All the theoretical crap is meaningless when it plays out on the streets and in the trenches.  Neither color nor gender, religion nor Ivy League school, provide a metric for what the Supreme Court should look like.

That we even think in terms of a Court that’s “reflective” of irrelevant criteria means we’re doomed to wallow in our own naivete and self-indulgence.  Maybe we will get the representative court we so desperately want in terms of color, gender, sexual orientation, shoe size. Then what? It hasn’t worked up to now, yet the passionately wishful feel it will be different if we repeat what we’ve done in the past? No doubt everything will be different if we include today’s flavor of justice, because this time we know better.