Happy Friday from Brad and Avalon here at Law.com's Bench Report. It's another balmy week in D.C., and we've got some summertime reading on the judiciary. This week, we're taking a look at the increasing diversity of the bench under President Biden, thanks to data in a new report from the American Bar Association. But even as the face of the courts changes, there's one thing that seems constant: The high number of federal judges with degrees from Harvard and Yale. Plus, take a closer look at the political questions doctrine. 

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Harvard University. (Photo: Shutterstock.com).

A Changing Judiciary, But Yale & Harvard Still Dominate

President Joe Biden's judicial appointees are changing the face of the federal bench, but there's one aspect that has largely stayed the same over time: Harvard and Yale remain the most common law schools that judges attend.

An American Bar Association report released Thursday found that, as of March, there were 111 federal judges with law degrees from Harvard and 72 from Yale. When Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court in April, she became the fourth sitting justice who graduated from Harvard Law School. Altogether, 232 federal judges have Ivy League law degrees, representing 18% of the U.S. judiciary.