President Obama believes that the Supreme Court should look like America. If you agree, more than likely you supported his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. She is the first Latina, and only the third woman, to serve on the high court. But Americans have characteristics that are less visible than gender and race, such as educational and professional history, religion, and regional background. In all those ways, the Supreme Court does not look much like America.

The current Supreme Court consists of four graduates of Harvard Law, three graduates of Yale Law, one graduate of Northwestern Law, and one graduate of Columbia Law who had also attended Harvard. Critics accuse this near-all-Ivy-League court of gravitating toward "a kind of high-level groupthink."

But this tells only half the story of the high court's lack of educational diversity. In a country that takes pride in its state university systems, it is striking that not a single member of the Supreme Court has ever attended a state university, graduate school or law school. In fact, no Supreme Court justice has attended a public institution of higher education since Chief Justice Warren Burger, who received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota. Burger retired from the Supreme Court in 1986.

The professional backgrounds of the justices are also narrow and not diverse. Every member of the current Supreme Court previously served as a judge on one of the United States appellate courts. Not one has ever held an elected political office.

Also skewed is the religious makeup of the Supreme Court. According to most estimates, the United States is about 50 percent Protestant, 25 percent Catholic, 15 percent nonreligious and less than 2 percent Jewish. Yet six out of nine Supreme Court Justices are Catholic (67 percent), two are Jewish (22 percent) and just one is Protestant (11 percent). That one is Justice John Paul Stevens, who is retiring. This is significant at a time when a justice's views on the hot-botton issues that may face the court -- including abortion and the death penalty -- may be colored, or perceived to be colored, by religious beliefs.

Finally, the regional background of the Supreme Court is out of line with the country as a whole. Eight of the nine members of the current Supreme Court were raised in one of three broad metropolitan areas: New York/New Jersey, Chicago/northwest Indiana or San Francisco/Sacramento.

There is nothing in the Constitution or federal law that forbids this type of regional concentration among members of the court. But the membership of Congress is geographically balanced, and the Electoral College provisions of the Constitution make it unlikely that the president and vice president will be residents of the same state. It would seem reasonable to expect some semblance of geographic diversity on the Supreme Court.

With his next nominee, Obama could certainly make progress toward his goal of a Supreme Court that looks more like America by choosing another female or another racial minority. But the court would also look more like the country if he chose a Protestant nominee from outside the country's biggest metropolitan areas who has held elective office and who went to a public college.

One prominent individual who fits this description is Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Yet somehow I doubt Pawlenty is on Obama's short list.

Max Heerman is an attorney in Minneapolis.