The Protestant Triumph? Ike - Obama's intellectual godfather?

There has been a lot of brush fire fretting about diversity and representativeness since four of the  five boroughs of New York City will be represented on the Supreme Court, composed of six Catholics and three Jews (orthodoxy and religiosity aside).  But it is worth mentioning that the President is a Protestant.  Niebuhrian themes rooted in original sin and man's imperfectibility and the need for grace underly much of what is said by him.
James Fallows (of  Scot Presbyterian extraction) points out the interesting parallels among : Obama, Jimmy Carter at Notre Dame (Fallows had a hand in that), and Dwight Eisenhower's  "farewell address".  Here they are in chronological order:
Ike:

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.  Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. 

Carter  (Notre Dame) (1977):

We live in a world that is imperfect and which will always be imperfect--a world that is complex and confused and which will always be complex and confused. I understand fully the limits of moral suasion. We have no illusion that changes will come easily or soon. But I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue the power of words and of the ideas that words embody. In our own history, that power has ranged from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream." 

Obama at West Point commencement (2010):
[A] fundamental part of our strategy for our security has to be America’s support for those universal rights that formed the creed of our founding.  And we will promote these values above all by living them -- through our fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution, even when it’s hard; even when we’re being attacked; even when we’re in the midst of war. 

And we will commit ourselves to forever pursuing a more perfect union.  Together with our friends and allies, America will always seek a world that extends these rights so that when an individual is being silenced, we aim to be her voice.  Where ideas are suppressed, we provide space for open debate.  Where democratic institutions take hold, we add a wind at their back.  When humanitarian disaster strikes, we extend a hand.  Where human dignity is denied, America opposes poverty and is a source of opportunity.  That is who we are.  That is what we do.

We do so with no illusions.  We understand change doesn’t come quick.  We understand that neither America nor any nation can dictate every outcome beyond its borders.  We know that a world of mortal men and women will never be rid of oppression or evil.  What we can do, what we must do, is work and reach and fight for the world that we seek -- all of us, those in uniform and those who are not.      

And in preparing for today, I turned to the world -- to the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes.  And reflecting on his Civil War experience, he said, and I quote, “To fight out a war you must believe in something and want something with all your might.  So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching.”  Holmes went on, “More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.”

Who rules?

Californian Timothy Egan complains in today's Times that with the retirement of Justice Stevens every sitting member of the the U.S. Supreme Court will be a graduate not merely of the Ivy League but of Harvard or Yale.  Well at least they've gotten past the old Protestant prep school thing - what with six Catholics on the court - and one from a mere Diocesan High School in the Bronx.  


Though I went to law school out of conference in Newark at Rutgers - the State University of New Jersey - I guess I should feel tribally connected at the lower levels of my education with:  Antonin Scalia (flunked the admission test for my high school Brooklyn Prep he told me) but got the same fare in Manhattan at Jesuit league rival Xavier.  
My Patriot League Alma Mater produced one Justice - Clarence Thomas '91.  He went to  Holy Cross where he served for a time as a trustee.  And we can claim vicariously Chief Justice John Roberts whose wife Jane Sullivan Roberts is on the Holy Cross Board of Trustees.  Oh if only I had done as well on the LSAT as I did on the GRE maybe I would have gotten to go to Cambridge or New Haven, and been on somebody's short list.  Oh well.  My fault for not being more focused or smarter in more than one way.


But it is not only the Supreme Court.  HERE is Lawrence Solum's  preliminary report on the law schools of new faculty hires:

Yale 18

Harvard 17

NYU 8

Columbia 5

Virginia 5

Berkeley 4

Penn 4

Chicago 3

Michigan 3

Stanford 3

Doubtless every new young law school faculty member is smart, diligent, motivated, etc.   But it does leave one asking whether the swath of schools from which faculty is selected is too narrow, and the resumes (which usually evidence but a quick dip in the practice of law) too much resemble each other.  The hazard?  That law schools which are the basic training for the practice of law will continue to put on the top shelf those who have old school ties but little experience beyond that.  Self-replication is not limited to ribo-nucleic acid.

Narcissistic Moment

I am grateful to Justice Thomas G. Saylor of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, who, dissenting a few months ago, in a welcome footnote, plucked from obscurity a line of mine that I like, but that no other writer had ever cited. Here it is:

Dean Wade's reluctance to put a full panoply of risk-utility factors before lay jurors may well be justified, but the reality is that, in design cases, jurors will be charged with the duty to make an informed evaluation concerning design reasonableness, and the trial courts will be responsible to provide the jurors sufficient guidance to accomplish this task. Cf. George W. Conk, Compared to What? Instructing the Jury on Product Defect under the Products Liability Act and the Restatement (Third) of Torts, 30 SETON HALL L. REV. 273, 277 (1999):

"The quality of decisions will be better served if jury instructions invite the presentation of evidence and spur arguments that evoke the full vibrancy of the moment of design for the jury (and the court it assists). The clamor of the competing considerations in the good and prudent designer's mind should be heard in the courtroom and in the jury room.".

Bugosh v. I.U. N. Am., Inc., 971 A.2d 1228, 1248 (Pa. 2009)

Images: Justice Saylor, me