The last Protestant?

Mark D. writes:

If Elena Kagan becomes a Supreme Court justice, replacing John Paul Stevens, it will mean that there are no white Protestants on the Supreme Court.

I’ve put together a short list of who the Supreme Court justices will be if Kagan gets on the court, along with each justice’s religion. The list does not include a single Protestant, Mainline or Evangelical:

Democrats
Elena Kagan—Jewish
Ruth Bader Ginsburg—Jewish
Stephen Breyer—Jewish
Sonia Sotomayor—Roman Catholic

Republicans
John Roberts—Roman Catholic
Antonin Scalia—Roman Catholic
Anthony Kennedy—Roman Catholic
Clarence Thomas—Roman Catholic
Samuel Alito—Roman Catholic

LA replies:

As for the interesting fact that all the Republican-appointed justices—a group that is co-extensive with the court’s four “conservative” justices plus the swing vote Kennedy—are Catholic, could it be that most conservative federal judges in America today, the group from which Supreme Court judges are generally chosen, tend to be Catholic rather than Protestant? And could that in turn have something to do with the fact that the Catholic Church, whatever its weaknesses today, still produces some people who have some traditional moral core and therefore are resistant to the liberal remaking of the Constitution, while the mainline Protestant denominations, being all liberal, tend to produce liberals? Meanwhile, I would imagine that very few federal judges are evangelicals. So on first glance I would guess that the predominance of Catholics among the Republican appointees is due to the fact that the pool of eligible conservative-leaning judges have tended to be Catholic.

At the same time, the membership of the U.S. Congress is still very largely Protestant, so I don’t think that the absence of Protestants on the Supreme Court symbolizes the end of the influence of Protestant America in the federal government.

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The Phantom Blogger writes:

Clarence Thomas was Episcopal when he joined the Supreme Court but converted back (he was raised Catholic) to Catholicism in the late 90’s.

Mark Jaws writes:

Interesting topic about the disappearance of white Protestants on the Court, but what I find more striking is the hugely disproportionate Jewish representation. Remember, Jews are a mere 1.7% of the population. We all know that Jewish leftists provide the Left with the money and the brain power. Evidently, when liberal Jews invest in the Democratic Party they get a return. Just what do conservative Jews—or any conservative for that matter—have to show for their investment in the GOP?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 11, 2010 05:28 PM | Send