This is the third and last post in my mini-series on evangelical underrepresentation among the legal elite.  My first post presented the claim that evangelicals are underrepresented and the second asked why this might be.  To conclude, I want to ask whether it even matters and, if so, in what ways.  I’ll limit myself to three somewhat random observations.

First, evangelicals don’t seem to care too much about their underrepresentation in the legal elite.  Although there have been a few murmurings about the lack of an evangelical on the Supreme Court, evangelicals seem to be much more interested in judicial appointments that will vote for outcomes favored by evangelicals than on the religious identity of the appointees. Thus, for example, after the Supreme Court nomination of evangelical Harriet Miers fell apart (and to repeat a point from yesterday’s post, observe that Miers, an SMU Law grad, lacked “elite” credentials), there seemed to be no great reaction from evangelicals when John Roberts, a Catholic (who undoubtedly had elite credentials), was picked instead.  The choice of Sam Alito, a Catholic, over one of the (very few) plausible evangelicals (like Mike McConnell) barely registered.

That evangelicals by and large feel “represented” by conservative Catholics in the upper echelons of the legal system is interesting in many ways.  One interpretation is that evangelicals accept that viewpoint rather than identity is what matters to representation—a claim that has all sorts of implications for other kinds of “diversity” questions (i.e, do liberal whites adequately represent the interests of liberal African-Americans?).

Another implication—and I’ll go ahead and say it although I know I’ll get pushback (perhaps even assassination)—is that evangelicals care about identity, but increasingly understand evangelical and conservative Catholic identity as converging.  Is it possible that, in the post-Vatican II world, evangelicals and Catholics are beginning to see themselves less as mere political allies and more as sharing a common identity in the loyal and traditionalist wing of Christendom?  This is clearly happening at least at the margins (witness the growth of evangelical Catholicism and liturgical revivals within Protestant evangelicalism, for example).

A second point:  Does evangelical underrepresentation in elite legal jobs matter to the way law is performed?  In his wonderful book Constitutional Faith, Sandy Levinson draws parallels between the competing Catholic and Protestant traditions on textualism, Read more