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11 of the past 15 Supreme Court justices went to Harvard or Yale Law

President Barack Obama (L) shakes hands with Judge Merrick Garland, the president’s nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in the Rose Garden at the White House, March 16, 2016, in Washington, DC.
President Barack Obama (L) shakes hands with Judge Merrick Garland, the president’s nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in the Rose Garden at the White House, March 16, 2016, in Washington, DC.
President Barack Obama (L) shakes hands with Judge Merrick Garland, the president’s nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in the Rose Garden at the White House, March 16, 2016, in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Judge Merrick Garland, whom President Obama just named as his Supreme Court nominee earlier today, is a distinguished graduate of Harvard Law School.

As are nine of the past 25 justices to serve on the court. Another six went to Yale, bringing the number of justices not educated at Harvard or Yale to 10 of 25.

But there’s a caveat: Another two, Sandra Day O’Connor and William Rehnquist, went to Stanford. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a graduate of Columbia — but she transferred there from, you guessed it, Harvard Law.

And university selectivity seems only to have grown over time. Out of the past 10 justices to serve, Ginsburg is the only one without a Yale or Harvard law degree.

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