Prof. David Upham of the University of Dallas notes that there would seem to be a lack of geographic diversity in the background of the members of the Supreme Court:
I should note that Justices Rehnquist and O'Connor went to Stanford Law School (where they finished first and third, respectively, in the Class of 1952). But, having gone there, I can tell you that Stanford is no more ideologically diverse than either of the others.All studied at Harvard or Yale Law School; almost all spent their pre-Court careers in the Boston-Washington axis of power, working for either the federal government or very prestigious law schools. Four Justices were raised in NYC (Ginsburg, Scalia, Kagan, Sotomayor), one in New Jersey (Alito), two in the Sacrament-San Francisco area (Breyer and Kennedy) . Only one grew up anywhere in the middle (Roberts--Indiana), and only one grew up in the South (Thomas--rural Georgia). Six of the nine (67%) justices, then, come from areas that today have combined, about 3% of the nation's population.
To me, more important than "geographic diversity" is a diversity of education. We are more and more becoming governed by people who all got an Ivy League education.
I don't believe for a minute that all of the "best minds" are in the Ivy League and Stanford. We have quickly become an oligarchy based on education.
"I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."-WFB