Supreme Court Docket Dominated by Elite Lawyers

In the past nine years some 17,000 lawyers have petitioned the US Supreme Court, but some had a much better chance of getting their cases heard than others. A recent study shows just 66 got 43% of the cases the justices chose to hear. While the Court is more diverse in some ways than it's ever been -- three of nine justices are women and two are minorities -- those 66 elite lawyers are strikingly homogeneous. Sixty-three are white, just eight are women. That's according to a lengthy study by the Reuters News Service, compiled in part by Joan Biskupic. She's author of Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice.