By Karen Sloan

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s grip on Harvard Law and Yale Law alumni will not be altered by Ketanji Jackson Jackson.

On Friday, President Joe Biden nominated Jackson to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer (another Harvard Law graduate). Eight of the nine justices currently sitting will come from Harvard Law or Yale Law, four each.

Harvard and Yale’s dominance has prompted handwringing for years.

Both Representative Jim Clyburn, a Democrat, and Senator Lindsey Graham (NYSE:), a Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said before Jackson’s nomination that Biden should pick someone without an Ivy League pedigree.

“Everybody doesn’t have to be from Harvard and Yale,” Graham said last month on the CBS “Face the Nation” program.

Amy Coney Barrett is the only sitting justice who has not received a Yale or Harvard law degree. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1997. Former President Donald Trump named Barrett after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020. In her last year, she transferred to Columbia from Harvard.

Benjamin Barton of the University of Tennessee, who is an expert on the Supreme Court, stated that the high concentration of Yale and Harvard law students creates a dysfunctional bench.

He said, “It is not a track that gives you broad life experiences.”

This is also an extremely recent phenomenon. Patrick Glen, of Georgetown Law’s analysis, found that about 16% were confirmed judges who had graduated from Harvard Law or Yale Law in the period 1902 to 1950. The percentage grew steadily up to 1986, when Antonin Scalia became a Harvard Law professor. Only Ginsburg was able to join the court after that.

Glen mentions Harriet Miers’ failed nomination in 2005 as an possible factor. She was criticised for her Southern Methodist University law degree, which is much lower-ranked than she.

“A president may believe he will have an easier time selling a nominee from Harvard or Yale based on the cultural renown that both schools share,” Glen wrote.