Mike Sacks a/k/a First One @ One First is a good friend of this blog. We first met when I recorded a Joshcast with Mike after he launched his F1@1F blog. Later, we hung outside 1 First Street as we waited for arguments in McDonald v. Chicago (see here, here, and here).

Mike wrote a fantastic cover story for the Christian Science Monitor, titled “Elena Kagan: Would she turn Supreme Court into We the People?”

Here is a sample:

They are fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, opera lovers and salsa dancers, long-winded pedants and quick-witted conversationalists, cancer survivors and nonagenarian swimmers, West Coasters and East Coasters, Winnebago drivers and airplane pilots. Aside from being nine of the most powerful men and women in the United States, the Supreme Court justices are also a lot like We the People.

But when we talk about the court looking like America, we also mean things such as the justices’ religions, races, genders, and sexual orientations. We mark our progress as a society by the diversity of these traits on the court. And President Obama’s nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan makes plain how far we’ve come, and for some, how much further we have to go.

Definitely worth a read.