Harvard and Yale own Supreme Court

Ivy has twirled itself around the marble columns of the Supreme Court like some smarty-pants weed. Over the past 25 years it has crept into the chamber and entwined every single justice's chair, except that of John Paul Stevens. But if Solicitor General and former Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan is confirmed by the Senate to replace him, the Ivy League's grip on the court will be complete: Every sitting justice will have attended either Yale or Harvard law schools.

Lady Justice: Your toga is stained crimson and littered with skulls and bones!

Granted, Ruth Bader Ginsburg got her JD from Columbia University, but only after she transferred from Harvard Law School (where she was president of her class) after two years. About half of the justices throughout history attended an Ivy League school. In the past 50 years, 64 percent of justices (18 out of 28) were educated at an Ivy. If Kagan is confirmed, the trend might as well become law.

The luster of an Ivy League degree became paramount after Ronald Reagan's failed 1987 nomination of Robert Bork, who was assailed for his outspoken right-leaning views on abortion, affirmative action and civil rights, according to Timothy O'Neill, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. An Ivy League diploma, O'Neill says, has become shorthand for: This person is objective and scientific and will come to the single best decision unswayed by personal bias.

"The Harvard and Yale pedigree became a way to defuse the ideological split," he says. "We know how powerful the court is - now we have to pretend it exists above ideology. We have to get nine vestal virgins from Harvard or Yale. Brains trump ideology."

In the current climate, diversity of one kind (gender, racial or ethnic) seems to outweigh diversity of another (economic, geographic or experience outside the law).