If Elena Kagan is confirmed as the newest justice on the Supreme Court, she’ll join three other Gothamites already serving on the bench Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor. That’s pretty incredible: In a country as vast as ours, nearly half the court will hail from just one clearly superior city. And while the court may be utterly lacking in geographical balance, its New York contingent is distributed quite nicely among the boroughs Scalia grew up in Queens, Ginsberg in Brooklyn, Sotomayor in the Bronx, and Kagan in Manhattan. This leaves Staten Island as the lone unrepresented borough, which, compounded by preexisting insecurities about its place in the city hierarchy, makes some people there a little upset.
“We are always left out of everything!” cried one Staten Island crybaby interviewed by the Daily News. “I’m really happy they picked who they picked … but I do wish it was someone from Staten Island,” another resident complained.
Indeed, in a perfect world, one Supreme Court seat would be reserved for each of New York’s boroughs, and then the rest of the 300 million people in the country could split the other four seats among themselves. That’s the only fair way to do this thing.
What does the Wu-Tang Clan have in common with Kagan, Sotomayor, Ginsburg & Scalia? [NYDN]
A New York Bloc on the Supreme Court [NYT]
