UNEQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW: THE SUPREME COURT AS AN ELITE INSTITUTION

Abstract

This paper examines the elitism of the Supreme Court and the concerns associated with it. Some literature has argued that the Roberts Court is the most elite compared to previous iterations of the Court and that this is cause for alarm. Several articles contended that having a Court of this nature has affected not only the cases it hears but also the ability of people to access legal avenues. Some scholars attributed this trend to the makeup of the Court itself. More specifically, they argued that the Justices’ similar backgrounds has made the Court a socially removed institution given their education, career, and socioeconomic status. Other scholars have looked at diversifying the Court as a remedy to this problem. Studies on the benefits of diversity have shown that groups composed of members of different races and gender perform better than groups of people who are the same. Researchers found that diverse groups engaged with facts and data more and made less mistakes in analyzing them. Furthermore, other studies have found that judges with symbolic diversity—for instance, a person’s race and/or gender—are influential enough to change the thought processes of other judges. This has led some scholars to call for a more diverse Supreme Court to protect it against elitism on the Court.