In making nominations to the Supreme Court, Presidents care
about diversity, which is a relatively new term for an idea that
is nearly as old as the Court itself. In the early days of the
republic, when regional disputes were the foremost conflict of
the era, nominees were generally defined by their home turfs. So
Presidents came to honor an informal tradition of preserving a
New England seat, a Virginia seat, a Pennsylvania seat, and a
New York seat on the Court. In the nineteenth century, as a
torrent of European immigrants transformed American society,
religious differences took on a new significance, and Presidents
used Supreme Court appointments to recognize the new arrivals’
growing power. In 1836, Andrew Jackson made Roger B. Taney the
first occupant of what became known as the Catholic seat on the
Court, and that tradition carried forward intermittently for
more than a century, with Edward White, Joseph McKenna, Pierce
Butler, Frank Murphy, and William J. Brennan, Jr., occupying the
chair. In 1916, Wo