More Diversity on the U.S. Supreme Court

Over at Balkinization, Jason Mazzone discusses the need for more diversity on the U.S. Supreme Court. The concept of diversity can be viewed in several ways of course. It has been argued that the U.S. needs Justices from more varied law schools, that there should be more racial diversity on the Court, that the Justices should not possess mainly academic and judicial job experience, etc. Professor Mazzone provocatively suggests that placing a foreigner on the U.S. Supreme Court would be valuable. http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-really-add-diversity-to-supreme.html Yet this is being done right now elsewhere. For example, I believe Kosovo has three foreign judges on their new Constitutional Court. One of them is a former judge from Minnesota. Moreover, other courts have diversity in the form of law clerks. South African Constitutional Court Justices can generally have one foreign law clerk and are essentially encouraged to do so. While I don’t see Professor Mazzone’s interesting suggestion coming to fruition any time soon, similar approaches are not unprecedented.