Courts

Young Lawyers Dish About What They Really Think About The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court justice most popular with young lawyers...

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Screenshot via Columbia)

As if you needed a reminder, the Supreme Court is about to get a new member. The confirmation hearings of the likely-to-be-confirmed Brett Kavanaugh are ongoing, and change is in the air. Taking a cue from this moment of national zeitgeist, Kaplan Bar Review surveyed more than 600 brand new lawyers asked them what they thought about the Supreme Court.

One of the most interesting questions they asked was who should the newest justice model his jurisprudence after. Despite her advanced age, the one, the only, the notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg topped the list. A whopping  41 percent of respondents said the next justice should emulate RBG. Next on the most-admired list was Sonia Sotomayor, with 19 percent of the vote. Third was Anthony Kennedy, with 11 percent. The rest of the justices failed to crack double digits. The results also showed a distinct preference for more liberal jurisprudence:

[T]he justices viewed as the liberal bloc (Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan) combined are the choice of 67 percent, while those considered to be part of the conservative bloc (Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas) are the combined choice of 22 percent. (Kennedy, long a swing vote on the Court, was not included in this categorization.)

According to Tammi Rice, vice president of Kaplan Bar Review, it could be millennials’ penchant for celebrity that pushes Ginsburg to the top of the judicial heap:

“Who sits on the Supreme Court is one of today’s most divisive issues, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of those rare personalities in the U.S. who seems to transcend ideology, as for many, she’s not only a brilliant legal mind, but also a pop culture icon. This could explain her popularity among the new generation of lawyers,” says Tammi Rice, vice president, Kaplan Bar Review. “It’s also clear from our survey that today’s new lawyers are telling us that there is a lot of potential Supreme Court talent beyond just Cambridge and New Haven.”

Despite this progressive bent in the data, the new lawyers surveyed also revealed themselves to be traditionalists in that 65 percent support a lifetime appointment for Supreme Court justices. Another notable data point is that 24 percent support elections for SCOTUS jurists (that sounds… awful).  And only 22 percent think that graduating from a T14 law school should be a qualification for sitting on the bench.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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