Supreme Court Justices: Demographic Characteristics, Professional Experience, and Legal Education, 1789-2010

Susan Navarro Smelcer
Analyst on the Federal Judiciary

The nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens has prompted renewed discussion among Senators, media commentators, and scholars regarding racial, ethnic, gender, religious, professional, and educational diversity on the Court. If confirmed, Solicitor General Elena Kagan would be the fourth woman appointed to the Court. For the first time, women would comprise one-third of the nine sitting Justices. Her appointment would also mark the first time that three Jewish Justices have shared the bench. For the first time in the Court's history, not one Justice would claim an affiliation with a Protestant Christian denomination. Notably, Solicitor General Kagan would also be the first Justice appointed without judicial experience since the 1971 appointment of William Rehnquist and the first to have served as the Solicitor General since the elevation of Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1967. Finally, if Solicitor General Kagan were confirmed, each of the nine Justices will have been educated at one of three Ivy League schools, and five members of the Court would claim Harvard as their law school alma mater. Against the backdrop of recent and pending changes to the Court's composition, this report examines the social, professional, and educational backgrounds of the Justices across the entire history of the Supreme Court. 

Over time, the Supreme Court has become more diverse in some ways and more homogeneous in others. When first constituted, and throughout most of its history, no women or minorities served on the Court. This changed with the appointment of the first African-American Justice, Thurgood Marshall, in 1967, and the first female Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, in 1981. When Justice Marshall retired from the Court in 1991, he was succeeded by another African-American, Justice Clarence Thomas. Although Justice O'Connor, upon her retirement in 2006, was succeeded by a male, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the Court's membership once again, in August 2009, included two female Justices, upon the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor. 

The religious affiliations of the Court's members also have changed over time. For almost the first 50 years of the Court, all Justices were affiliated with Protestant Christian churches. The first Jewish Justice, Louis Brandeis, was appointed in 1916. Currently, two Jewish Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, serve on the Court. The first Catholic Justice, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, was appointed in 1836. With the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor, six of the nine current Justices identify as Roman Catholic. 

The career experiences of the Court's Justices, while quite diverse in the past, have become more homogeneous in recent times. Historically, Justices had served in a variety of professions, such as in the Cabinet, in a federal or state legislative body, or in a private legal practice. In the last 50 years, however, Justices have more and more frequently been elevated from positions on the federal circuit courts of appeals. Of the nine current Justices, all possess federal circuit court experience, and six have served as government attorneys in some capacity. No sitting Justice has served in a federal or state Cabinet position or legislature. Justice Sonia Sotomayor brings both experience as a private practitioner and a government attorney and is the only current Justice on the Court to have experience as a federal trial judge. 

Over time, Justices' legal educations have become more homogeneous, as well. In the past 20 years, especially, three Ivy League law schools—Harvard, Yale, and Columbia—have been disproportionately represented on the Court. Of the nine sitting Justices, eight have attended one of these three law schools, including recently confirmed Justice Sotomayor, who is a graduate of Yale Law School. .


Date of Report: June 1, 2010
Number of Pages: 37
Order Number: R40802
Price: $29.95

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