Pews and the Bench

Salon’s Frances Kissling asks, “Are six Catholics too many for the Supreme Court?”

If Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, six of the nine justices will be Roman Catholic. Two of the other three justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, are Jewish. John Paul Stevens, at age 89 the oldest and longest-serving justice, would be the only Protestant left on the court.

Should that worry us?

After all, for most of the court’s 220-year history, all the members were white Protestant males.