Supreme Court Justices: Demographic
Characteristics, Professional Experience, and
Legal Education, 1789-2010
Susan Navarro Smelcer
Analyst on the Federal Judiciary
April 9, 2010
Congressional Research Service
7-5700
www.crs.gov
R40802
CRS Report for Congress
P
repared for Members and Committees of Congress
Supreme Court Justices: Demographic Characteristics, Professions, and Education
Summary
On May 1, 2009, Justice David H. Souter announced his retirement as an Associate Justice when
the U.S. Supreme Court recessed for the summer. To fill this vacancy, President Barack Obama
selected Sonia Sotomayor, a judge from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In
announcing the nomination, President Obama noted her Ivy League education and extensive
judicial experience. President Obama also emphasized Sotomayor’s life story, discussing in
particular her upbringing as a child of Puerto Rican-born parents in a Bronx housing project.
The Sotomayor nomination prompted renewed discussion among Senators, media commentators,
and scholars regarding racial, ethnic, gender, religious, professional, and educational diversity on
the Court. With the upcoming retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, announced on April 9,
2010, this discussion is likely to be renewed. With his departure, the Court will lose its only
protestant Christian member. Justice Stevens is also the only active Justice to have served in the
military during wartime. 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 has 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 last 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.
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Supreme Court Justices: Demographic Characteristics, Professions, and Education
Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1
Supreme Court Appointments in Historical Context............................................................... 3
Demographic Characteristics....................................................................................................... 6
Race and Ethnicity ................................................................................................................ 6
Gender .................................................................................................................................. 7
Religion ................................................................................................................................ 9
Professional Background........................................................................................................... 11
Experience in Private Practice ............................................................................................. 13
Experience as a Government Attorney................................................................................. 14
Judicial Experience ............................................................................................................. 15
Prior Political Experience.................................................................................................... 22
Prior Military Experience .................................................................................................... 25
Educational Background ........................................................................................................... 28
Type of Legal Training........................................................................................................ 28
Law School Education ........................................................................................................ 30
Conclusion................................................................................................................................ 31
Figures
Figure 1. Religious Affiliation of Supreme Court Justices............................................................ 9
Figure 2. Prior Experience of Supreme Court Justices ............................................................... 12
Figure 3. Prior Occupations of Supreme Court Justices Over Time ............................................ 13
Figure 4. Percentage of Total Justices Appointed with Judicial Experience ................................ 17
Figure 5. Percentage of Sitting Justices with Prior Judicial Experience ...................................... 18
Figure 6. Legislative Experience Over Time.............................................................................. 24
Figure 7. Military Service of Supreme Court Justices ................................................................ 27
Figure 8. Legal Education of Supreme Court Justices Over Time............................................... 29
Figure 9. Law Schools Attended by Supreme Court Justices ...................................................... 31
Tables
Table 1. Executive Experience of Supreme Court Justices ......................................................... 25
Contacts
Author Contact Information ...................................................................................................... 33
Congressional Research Service
Supreme Court Justices: Demographic Characteristics, Professions, and Education
Introduction
On May 1, 2009, Justice David H. Souter announced his retirement as an Associate Justice when
the U.S. Supreme Court recessed for the summer.1 To fill the vacancy created by Justice Souter’s
resignation, President Barack Obama selected Sonia Sotomayor, a judge from the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit. In announcing the nomination, the President noted her Ivy
League education and extensive judicial experience, first as a federal trial judge and later as a
federal appellate judge, as evidence of her qualifications to sit on the Court. President Obama also
emphasized Judge Sotomayor’s life story, discussing in particular her upbringing as a child of
Puerto Rican-born parents in a Bronx housing project.2
On April 9, 2010, after more than 34 years of service, Justice John Paul Stevens announced his
intention to retire at the beginning of the Court’s summer recess.3 Justice Stevens, who was
elevated from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in 1975, will retire at the age of 90.
With his departure, the Court will lose its only protestant Christian member. Justice Stevens is
also the only active Justice to have served in the military during wartime.
The Constitution is silent on the qualifications necessary to be appointed to the Court. The only
reference to the appointment of Justices in the U.S. Constitution occurs in Article II, Sec. 2, Cl. 1,
which states that the President “shall nominate, and by and with the consent of the Senate, shall
appoint ... Judges of the supreme Court.” When selecting a Supreme Court nominee, Presidents
have often been understood to consider, among other things, the demographic, professional, and
educational backgrounds of potential nominees, as well as how their selection might affect the
diversity of the Court’s membership.4 Presidents may choose a nominee with certain
characteristics in part to satisfy particular constituencies. They may additionally perceive a
nominee’s demographic characteristics, professional experience, and legal education as important
attributes for the next Supreme Court Justice to have.5
A White House news release, issued following President Obama’s announcement of the
Sotomayor nomination, emphasized the diversity of the nominee’s prior professional experience.
It noted that “[h]er American story and three decade career in nearly every aspect of the law
provide Judge Sotomayor with unique qualifications to be the next Supreme Court Justice.... If
confirmed, [she] would bring more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any
justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in
the past 70 years.”6
1 Letter from David H. Souter, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, to Barack Obama, President of
the United States, May 1, 2009, http://www.supremecourtus.gov/publicinfo/press/pr_05-01-09.html.
2 See U.S. President (Obama), “Remarks on the Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court Associate
Justice, May 26, 2009,” Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, DCPD-200900402, at http://www.gpo.gov/
fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900402/html/DCPD-200900402.htm
3 Charlie Savage, “Justice Stevens to Retire After 34 Years,” The New York Times, April 9, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/politics/10stevens.html?ref=politics.
4 For more information about the criteria used by Presidents in the selection of nominees, please see CRS Report
RL31989, Supreme Court Appointment Process: Roles of the President, Judiciary Committee, and Senate.
5 Some scholars argue, however, that demographic characteristics have little value in explaining judges’ decision-
making. For an overview of this argument, see Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth, The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal
Model (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 231-234.
6 The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Judge Sonia Sotomayor,” press release, May 26, 2009,
(continued...)
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Discussions regarding the importance and proper role of demographic characteristics in the
selection of federal judges have occurred since the Carter Administration’s concerted effort to
appoint minorities and women to the federal bench.7 As recently as Justice Sotomayor’s
confirmation hearings, Senators, the press, and others have debated the importance and
appropriateness of achieving ethnic, gender, and other forms of diversity in an institution such as
the Supreme Court.8
Beyond the effect of demographic characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and religion,
some scholars have examined whether a Justice’s prior professional or educational experiences
influence his or her decision making. Various academics have suggested that prior professional
experience, such as prosecutorial experience;9 previous service in federal, state, or local
legislative, executive, or judicial positions;10 and military service11 may influence a Justice’s
(...continued)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Background-on-Judge-Sonia-Sotomayor/.
7 For a discussion of President Carter’s efforts and the opposition he faced, see Sheldon Goldman, “Carter Reforms
Judicial Selection,” in Picking Federal Judges: Lower Court Selection from Roosevelt through Reagan (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 236-284. More recently, for a discussion of the perceived pressure on President
George W. Bush to appoint a woman to the Court, see, for example, Elizabeth Bumiller, “Pillow-Talk Call for a
Woman to fill O’Connor Seat,” The New York Times, July 18, 2005, p. A13, Late Edition (Final). Additionally,
scholars have examined the relationship between race, gender, and judging in the federal courts since the Carter
Administration. See, for example, Thomas G. Walker and Deborah J. Barrow, “The Diversification of the Federal
Bench: Policy and Process Ramifications,” The Journal of Politics, vol. 47, no. 2 (June 1985), pp. 596-617; Barbara A.
Perry, A “Representative” Supreme Court? The Impact of Race, Religion, and Gender on Appointments. (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1991); Jennifer A. Segal, “Representative Decision Making on the Federal Bench: Clinton’s District
Court Appointees,” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 2 (March 2000), pp.138-140. See also Jeffrey Segal and
Harold Spaeth, The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp.
231-234.
8 For a discussion of the role of these issues in the Sotomayor nomination, see, for example, Peter Baker, “Court Choice
Brings Issue of ‘Identity’ Back to the Forefront,” New York Times, May 30, 2009, p. A20, Late Edition (Final).
9 Some scholars suggest that judges with experience as government attorneys may tend to rule in favor of the
government more often than their colleagues without such experience. See, for example, C. Neal Tate and Panu
Sittiwong, “Decision Making in the Canadian Supreme Court: Extending the Personal Attributes Model Across
Nations,” Journal of Politics, vol. 51 (Nov. 1989), pp. 911-912; Mark A. Cohen, “Explaining Judicial Behavior, or
What’s ‘Unconstitutional’ about the Sentencing Commission?” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, vol. 7,
no. 1 (Spring 1991), pp.183-199, 196; and Theodore Eisenberg and Sherri Lynn Johnson, “The Effects of Intent: Do
We Know How Legal Standards Work?” Cornell Law Review, vol. 76, no. 6 (Sept. 1991), pp.1151-1197, 1190.
10 In particular, scholars have examined the influence of prior judicial experience on judges’ behavior from a multitude
of perspectives. For example, some scholars have studied the relationship between prior judicial experience and the
predictability of Justices’ decision making on the Court. For a discussion of this, see Edward V. Heck and Melinda
Gann Hall, “Bloc Voting and the Freshman Justice Revisited,” Journal of Politics, vol. 43, no. 3 (Aug. 1981), pp.852-
860; David W. Allen, “Voting Blocs and the Freshman Justice on State Supreme Courts,” The Western Political
Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 3 (Sept. 1991), pp. 727-747; Timothy M. Hagle, “‘Freshman Effects’ for Supreme Court
Justices,” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 37, no. 4 (Nov. 1993), pp.1142-1157; John Szmer and Donald R.
Songer, “The Effects of Information on the Accuracy of Presidential Assessments of Supreme Court Nominee
Preferences,” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 1 (March 2005), pp.151-160. Others have examined whether
Justices with prior judicial experience author higher-quality opinions. See, for example, Felix Frankfurter, “The
Supreme Court in the Mirror of Justices,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 105, no. 6 (April 1957), pp.
781-796; William E. Hulbary and Thomas G. Walker, “The Supreme Court Selection Process: Presidential Motivations
and Judicial Performance,” The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2 (June 1980), pp. 185-196; Gregory A.
Caldeira, “In the Mirror of the Justices: Sources of Greatness on the Supreme Court,” Political Behavior, vol. 10, no. 3
(Autumn 1988), pp. 247-266; Montgomery N. Kosma, “Measuring the Influence of Supreme Court Justices,” The
Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 27, no. 2 (June 1998), pp. 333-372. For an examination of United States Courts of
Appeals judges, see William M. Landes, Lawrence Lessig, and Michael E. Solimine, “Judicial influence: A Citation
Analysis of Federal Courts of Appeals Judges,” The Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 27, no. 2 (June 1998), pp. 271-332.
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perspective and decision-making process. In addition, scholars have hypothesized that a Justice’s
legal education may affect his or her decision making, as well.12
While a Justice’s prior professional experience or legal education may influence his or her
decision making, it has been suggested that the relative diversity of the Court with respect to
demographic characteristics, professional experience, and legal education may also influence
collegial, or group, decision making. In particular, it has been argued that the quality of the
decisions made by a collective decision-making body, such as the Supreme Court, is dependent in
part on the diversity of its membership.13 Specifically, these scholars suggest that “the greater the
diversity of participation by people of different backgrounds and experiences, the greater the
range of ideas and information contributed to the [collective decision-making] process.”14
Supreme Court Appointments in Historical Context
Historically, appointments to the Supreme Court have occurred against the backdrop of a
continuing national debate about the role of the Court in our democratic system. In addition to
considering a broad range of statutory and constitutional issues, the Court has addressed a wide
range of disputes regarding statutory interpretation, policy questions, and the distribution of
power in American society, including the balance of power between states and the federal
government, the government and businesses, the government and individuals, and the three
branches of the federal government.15
During roughly the first 60 years of the Republic’s existence (1789-1850), issues regarding states’
rights versus federal supremacy were often highly contentious. Throughout this period,
presidential appointments to the Court reflected both the fragile political state of the union and an
apparent desire of Presidents, in some cases, to use Supreme Court appointments to shift the
balance of power in the direction of either the federal government or the states, depending on the
philosophy of the Chief Executive. Presidents often appeared concerned with a nominee’s state of
(...continued)
11 Some scholars suggest that Justices with prior military experience may have a distinct view of the role of the
executive. For an example, see Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise, and Andrew P. Morris, “Charting the Influence on the
Judicial Mind: An Empirical Study of Judicial Reasoning,” New York University Law Review, vol. 73, no. 5 (November
1998), pp. 1439.
12 In particular, it has been argued that while law schools generally share the common purpose of “nourish[ing] and
transmit[ting] the Anglo-American legal tradition” through a well-documented socialization process, each law school
may impart its own institutional perspective. This may be especially true for Ivy League institutions, such as Harvard,
Yale, and Columbia, “which ... have changed slowly over time [and] may themselves have fostered a particular culture
of legal education.” See Daniel J. Meador, “Lawyers and Legal Education in the South: A Proposed Study,” Tennessee
Law Review, vol. 30 (Summer 1963), p. 540; Lani Guiner, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, “Becoming Gentlemen:
Women’s Experiences at One Ivy League Law School,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 143, no. 1 (Nov.
1994), pp. 3.
13 Lee Epstein, Jack Knight, and Andrew D. Martin, “The Norm of Prior Judicial Experience and Its Consequences for
Career Diversity on the U.S. Supreme Court,” California Law Review, vol. 91, no. 4 (July 2003), p. 944.
14 Ibid., p. 944.
15 For a discussion of these themes, see generally Lee Epstein and Thomas G. Walker, Constitutional Law for a
Changing America: Rights, Liberties, and Justice, Sixth Edition (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006); and Lee Epstein
and Thomas G. Walker, Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Institutional Powers and Constraints, Sixth
Edition (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006).
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residence, seeking balanced representation from each region of the country, or with a nominee’s
proven political loyalty or perceived political reliability once on the Court.16
Starting in the 1850s, as tensions over the appropriate division of power between the federal and
state governments increased, Presidents appeared to seek different characteristics in their
Supreme Court nominees. According to constitutional scholar and longtime observer of the
Supreme Court, Henry J. Abraham, “mounting attacks on the Court because of what abolitionists
termed its pro-Southern stance in slavery and fugitive slave issues” prompted Presidents, when
making a nomination, to consider a nominee’s perceived strength of character, among other
attributes, to handle the difficult questions faced by the Court.17 During and after the Civil War,
until about 1880, Presidents sought Justices who could help ease tensions between the North and
the South, who were geographically representative of the nation, and, in the case of Abraham
Lincoln, who would further the President’s interest in the war effort.18
In the 1880s, the national dialogue shifted to the implementation of laissez-faire economic policy
and the ability of the government to regulate business practices; it could be argued that
Presidents’ criteria for selecting Supreme Court Justices also shifted to match these changing
national priorities. This debate over the economic powers of the federal government continued
well into the 20th century, culminating in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to “pack
the Court” with “New Deal” supporters in 1937. From 1881 through 1952, emphasis on a
nominee’s state of residence and prior judicial experience appeared generally, if not always, to
wane. Instead, Presidents appeared to be chiefly influenced by considerations of political loyalty,
personal relationships, and perceived reliability in the individuals’ social and economic views in
their selection of Supreme Court nominees. Arguably, this trend continued through the Truman
Administration, where, Professor Abraham contends, all four of Truman’s appointees were the
result of “crony appointment[s]” and were good friends and political allies of the President.19
By the early 1950s, however, the Court had begun its involvement in some of the most volatile
social issues of the day, including cases involving the separation between church and state and
racial discrimination. Upon the death of Chief Justice Frederick M. Vinson in 1953, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, according to Professor Abraham, looked outside of his circle of advisors
and colleagues for someone who could command the respect of the nation and create geographic
and religious balance on the Court.20 Like Presidents before him, the newly elected President
Eisenhower also desired a Chief Justice who would reflect his own “moderate progressivism,
common sense, high ideals, and ‘absence of extreme views.’”21 His selection of Earl Warren as
Chief Justice, however, resulted in what scholars describe as some of the Court’s most
controversial decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954),22 Abington School District
16 For an in-depth discussion of the criteria used by Presidents to select Supreme Court nominees in the first 61 years of
the Court’s history, see Henry J. Abraham, “Chapter Five: The First Forty Years: From George Washington to John
Quincy Adams, 1789-1829” and “Chapter Six: The Next Forty Years: From Andrew Jackson to Andrew Johnson,
1829-1869,” Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court, Third Edition (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 71-125.
17 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, p. 110.
18 Ibid., pp. 110-136.
19 Ibid., p. 241.
20 Ibid., p. 241.
21 Ibid., p. 254.
22 347 U.S. 483 (1954). This decision effectively overruled the separate-but-equal doctrine, mandating the
desegregation of public schools with “all deliberate speed.” For a discussion of desegregation cases in a broader
(continued...)
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v. Schempp (1963),23 and Reynolds v. Sims (1964).24 Eisenhower, reportedly disappointed with his
appointee’s leadership on the Court, required that his next appointee have prior judicial
experience so that he would have an “inkling of [the nominee’s] philosophy.”25
The nomination criteria of Eisenhower’s successors, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson, marked a return, in the words of one scholar, to “the politics of patronage.”26 Kennedy
and Johnson both purportedly rewarded personal loyalty in their nominations to the Court and
encountered very little opposition in the Senate to their selections.27 By the late 1960s, however,
the nomination process became highly contentious as a result of the “resentment against the
[liberal jurisprudence of the] Supreme Court.”28 David Yalof, a scholar of the Supreme Court
appointment process, explained the transition into a new era of politics in the following way:
The battle over Abe Fortas’s nomination [to the position of Chief Justice] in 1968 had
ushered in a new and more contentious era for Supreme Court appointments. Divided
government became a reality in the early 1970s, with Senators assuming an increasingly
hostile posture against presidential nominees. Enhanced media attention of the process
followed. Interest groups, including an increasingly aggressive professional bar [the
American Bar Association], jockeyed for position to influence each vacancy.29
During the Nixon Administration, then assistant U.S. Attorney General and future Supreme Court
Justice William Rehnquist advised Nixon’s Attorney General that, while interest groups may
object to a nominee’s perceived policy positions, as indicated by prior deeds, past speeches, or
judicial record, such objections “cannot successfully defeat a nominee” without some additional
objection regarding the nominee’s ethics or legal qualifications.30
As a result, it has been suggested, Presidents during this period more frequently sought nominees
with impressive judicial qualifications. They purportedly did so not only to insulate a nominee
(...continued)
context, see Epstein and Walker, Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Rights, Liberties, and Justice, pp. 661-
696.
23 374 U.S. 203 (1963). This decision found that mandatory religious activities in public schools, such as the recitation
of the Lord’s Prayer and the reading of Bible verses, is a violation of both the Free Exercise Clause and the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, even if the school allows a student to be exempted from such activities
with parental permission. For a discussion of Supreme Court cases concerning prayer in school, see Epstein and
Walker, Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Rights, Liberties, and Justice, pp. 196–213.
24 77 U.S. 533 (1964). This decision promulgated the “one man, one vote” principle, which required states to apportion
state and federal legislative districts based on population. For a discussion of landmark Supreme Court cases
concerning voting rights, see Epstein and Walker, Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Rights, Liberties, and
Justice, pp. 809-823.
25 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, p. 254.
26 David A. Yalof, The Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 70.
27 Both of Kennedy’s appointees and Johnson’s first nomination of Abe Fortas to Associate Justice encountered very
little opposition, with their confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee lasting no more than two
days. For more information regarding the Supreme Court appointment process generally and the length of nominations
specifically, see CRS Report RL31989, Supreme Court Appointment Process: Roles of the President, Judiciary
Committee, and Senate; and CRS Report RL33225, Supreme Court Nominations, 1789 - 2009: Actions by the Senate,
the Judiciary Committee, and the President, respectively.
28 Yalof, The Pursuit of Justices, p.130.
29 Ibid., p.131.
30 Ibid., p.121.
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from criticism, but also (as President Eisenhower had done) to gauge, from a nominee’s judicial
experience, how he or she might make decisions once on the Court.31 Consistent with this
hypothesis, the vast majority of Supreme Court Justices appointed in the last 30 years have had
prior judicial experience, specifically experience as judges in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Over the course of two centuries, the importance of demographic characteristics, professional
experience, and legal education in the selection of Justices has varied widely. This report
examines these characteristics across the four historical periods described above (1789-1850,
1851-1880, 1881-1952, 1953-2010).32 Specifically, the first section examines, for each of the time
periods, the race, ethnicity, gender, and religious affiliation of the Justices. The second section
examines the prior professional backgrounds of the Justices, including past experience in private
practice or as government attorneys; as judges; as legislators or executives at the local, state, and
federal level; and as members of the military. The third and final section examines the
professional training and legal education of Supreme Court Justices, focusing on developments in
legal education from 1789 to the present and the representation of Ivy League law schools on the
Court.
Demographic Characteristics
Race and Ethnicity
Since the creation of the Court in 1789, its membership has largely reflected the class of white,
land-owning males. Of the 111 men and women to serve on the Supreme Court, only 2 have self-
identified as African-American. The first to join the Court, Justice Thurgood Marshall, was
appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. Prior to his appointment, Marshall had worked
as the director and counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for 21 years, served on the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for four years and, at the time of his appointment, was
serving as the solicitor general of the United States. Hearings on Marshall’s nomination lasted
five days, longer than all but one other Supreme Court nominee to that point in time; Marshall
was confirmed by a 69-11 vote.33
The second African-American to serve on the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas, was nominated by
President George H.W. Bush to fill a vacancy created by Justice Marshall in 1991. At the time,
Thomas was serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and previously
served as the director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1982 through
1990. Thomas’s confirmation hearings extended across 11 days. In the final 3 days of hearings, 21
public witnesses testified in response to accusations of sexual harassment, including Thomas
31 See, for example, Yalof’s discussion of Presidents Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s searches in chapters five
and six of The Pursuit of Justice, pp. 97-167.
32 One important factor, geography, is not discussed in this report. For an account of the importance of geography in the
selection process, see generally Abraham, Justices and Presidents. For a more focused and systematic study of
geographical representation on the Court, see William J. Daniels, “The Geographic Factor in Appointments to the
United States Supreme Court: 1789-1976,” The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 2 (June 1978), pp. 226-237.
33 See CRS Report RL33225, Supreme Court Nominations, 1789 - 2009: Actions by the Senate, the Judiciary
Committee, and the President, p. 35.
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himself. His nomination, reported without recommendation out of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, was confirmed by a 52-48 vote.34
Until the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, no Justice who identified as Hispanic or
Latina had ever served on the Court.35 However, as Sotomayor has explained, her identification as
Latina is not reflective of a single idea or definitions of the term. In 2002, she noted,
If I had pursued my career in my undergraduate history major, I would likely provide you
with a very academic description of what being a Latino or Latina means. For example, I
could define Latinos as those peoples and cultures populated or colonized by Spain who
maintained or adopted Spanish or Spanish Creole as their language of communication. That
antiseptic description however... does not explain why individuals like us, many of whom are
born in this completely different American culture, still identify so strongly with those
communities in which our parents were born and raised.36
Justice Sotomayor, born in New York to Puerto Rican-born parents, views the identification as
embracing all of the language, food, and traditions of her family but without monolithically
defining the term “Latina” as any one of those things. She recognizes that many people who
identify as Latino or Latina may have had completely different cultural experiences.37
Gender
As with racial and ethnic minorities, women have been similarly unrepresented on the Court. In
the 220-year history of the Court, only three women have served as Supreme Court Justices. The
first, Sandra Day O’Connor, was appointed in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, following a
campaign promise that “[o]ne of the first Supreme Court vacancies in my administration will be
filled with the most qualified woman I can find.”38 O’Connor, a former state legislator and state
appellate court judge, was confirmed by a 99-0 vote in the Senate.
The second woman appointed to the bench, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was appointed in 1993 by
President William J. Clinton. A widely respected advocate of women’s rights, Ginsburg was the
first tenured female law professor at Columbia University, the first director of the American Civil
Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, and had successfully argued cases involving gender
34 Of the 106 Supreme Court nominations reported out from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the full Senate, only 4
have been reported without recommendation, one of which was the nomination of Clarence Thomas. Ibid., pp. 9, 38.
35 Scholars debate whether Justice Benjamin Cardozo, whose family roots are believed to trace back to Portugal, was
the first Hispanic to serve on the Court. In modern usage, the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” are terms of self-
identification, used inconsistently by individuals who were born or whose ancestors were born in over 20 Spanish-
speaking countries. At the time of Cardozo’s appointment in the 1930s, such terms were not used in the census. For
example, the only identifier used to count the Hispanic population was that of “Mexican.” When asked how Justice
Cardozo would self-identify, a biographer of the Justice answered, “I think he would have identified as a Sephardic Jew
whose ancestors came from the Iberian Peninsula.” According to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, Justice Cardozo
would not qualify as Hispanic by current census standards, which do not identify individuals of Portuguese descent as
Hispanic. As a result, Justice Sotomayor is the first Hispanic or Latina Justice to serve on the Supreme Court, at least
by census standards. For an overview of this issue, see Neil A. Lewis, “Was Hispanic on Court in the ‘30s?” New York
Times, May 27, 2009, p. A16, Late Edition (Final); Jeffrey Passel and Paul Taylor, Who’s Hispanic, Pew Hispanic
Center, Washington, DC, May 29, 2009, http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/111.pdf.
36 Sonia Sotomayor, “A Latina Judge’s Voice,” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, vol. 13, no. 1 (Spring 2002), p. 88.
37 Ibid.
38 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, p. 339.
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equality before the Court on five separate occasions. President Clinton purportedly gravitated
toward Ginsburg due to former Solicitor General Erwin Griswold’s comparison of her
contribution to the advancement of women’s rights through litigation to that of Justice Thurgood
Marshall’s contribution in the realm of civil rights.39
From the appointment of Justice Ginsburg in 1993 to the retirement of Justice O’Connor in 2005,
two of the nine sitting Justices were women.40 O’Connor’s retirement reportedly prompted some
political pressure on President George W. Bush that her replacement be a woman, including from
First Lady Laura Bush.41 O’Connor herself hoped that President Bush would select a woman.
Specifically, she noted, “It is important for the citizens of this country to see that in all areas of
our governmental structures that women are also represented there.”42
On July 19, 2005, 18 days after O’Connor’s announcement, President Bush nominated John G.
Roberts, Jr., a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to be an Associate
Justice. Upon the death of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, President Bush withdrew
Roberts’s nomination and, on the same day, nominated Roberts for the position of Chief Justice.
To fill the vacancy created by O’Connor’s retirement, President Bush nominated Harriet Miers,
who was then serving in the position of White House counsel. Miers’s nomination was withdrawn
52 days later, and the name of Samuel A. Alito, Jr., was submitted in her place.43
Another vacancy would not occur again until the retirement of Justice David Souter in June 2009.
Confirmed on August 6, 2009, Sonia Sotomayor joined Justice Ginsburg on the bench as the third
woman to be appointed to the Court.
39 Mark Silverstein, Judicious Choices: The New Politics of Supreme Court Confirmations (New York: W.W. Norton
and Company, 1994), p. 167. Thurgood Marshall served as assistant special counsel for the NAACP and, in that role,
was one of the architects of the NAACP’s legal strategy that eventually led to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court
decision Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (347 U.S. 483), in which the Supreme Court which found that racial
segregation based on the separate-but-equal doctrine was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. From 1940 through 1961, Marshall argued successfully before the Court in 29 separate cases. Marshall
was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, like Marshall, was
the architect of the ACLU’s legal strategy with respect to women’s rights. Notably, in 1971, Ginsburg successfully
argued Reed v. Reed (404 U.S. 71) before the Supreme Court, in which the Court found that an Idaho statute that, in
determining the executor of an estate of a minor who has died intestate, gave preference to men over women was a
violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ginsburg successfully argued five gender
discrimination cases before the Supreme Court.
40 After 24 years of service on the Supreme Court, Justice O’Connor announced her retirement from the Court on July
1, 2005, effective upon the start of the next October term or the appointment of her successor. See Letter from Sandra
Day O'Connor, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, to George W. Bush, President of the
United States, July 1, 2005, http://www.supremecourtus.gov/publicinfo/press/oconnor070105.pdf.
41 Jan Crawford Greenburg, “Bush advisers alter Court focus; Aides said to push conservative males to replace
O’Connor,” Chicago Tribune, July 19, 2005, p. C8; Steven Thommas and Stephen Henderson, “Bush Picks Roberts for
Chief Justice; Speculation on Who Will Fill Other Seat,” Monterey County Herald, Sept. 6, 2005, Section Z (Nation);
Christina L. Boyd and Lee Epstein, “Female Justices vital,” The Virginian-Pilot, May 5, 2009, p. B7.
42 Laura Mecoy, “O'Connor’s advice: Pick a woman,” Sacramento Bee, Oct. 28, 2005, p. A22, Final Edition.
43 Miers requested that her nomination be withdrawn after Senators requested privileged White House documents from
Miers’s tenure as White House counsel to evaluate her record. For a more comprehensive account of the nomination of
Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, see Jeffrey Toobin, “Chapter 22: I Know Her Heart,” in The Nine: Inside the
Secret World of the Supreme Court (New York: Doubleday, 2007), pp. 284-297. See also CRS Report RL33118, Speed
of Presidential and Senate Actions on Supreme Court Nominations, 1900-2009.
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Religion
Religious diversification on the Court began to occur long before the inclusion of minorities and
women on the Court. Figure 1 displays the distribution of the religious affiliation of Supreme
Court Justices appointed during each of the four periods of the Court’s history, as discussed
above. As illustrated in Figure 1, the first Justices were almost exclusively affiliated with
protestant Christian churches. In the first 60 years of the Court, 30 (96.8%) of the 31 Justices
appointed were protestant Christians. Seventeen (54.8% of the 31) were Episcopalian,44 and 13
(41.9%) were of other Protestant denominations, such as Congregationalism, Methodism, and
Presbyterianism.
Figure 1. Religious Affiliation of Supreme Court Justices
By Appointment Date, 1789-2010
0.6
0.5
0.4
stices 0.3
f Ju
o 0.2
%
0.1
0
1789-1850
1851-1880
1881-1952
1953-2010
Years
Episcopalian
Other Protestant
Roman Catholic
Jewish
Source: Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court Compendium:
Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
The lone non-Protestant Christian Justice appointed during this period and the Court’s first
Roman Catholic was Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who was appointed by Andrew Jackson in
1836. The second Roman Catholic Justice, Edward Douglass White, was not appointed until
44 The Episcopal Church, a protestant church deriving from the Church of England, was established in the American
colonies with the Jamestown colony in 1607. After the Revolutionary War, all English public support for the church
ceased. Though relatively impoverished, by this time the church had spread widely through the colonies, especially in
the southern and middle colonies. See Theodore Dwight Woolsey et al., The First Century of the Republic: A View of
American Progress (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876), p. 480; Episcopal Church of the United States, “Newsline:
Anglican and Episcopal Church History,” Accessed July 14, 2009, http://www.episcopalchurch.org/
newsline_22035_ENG_HTM.htm.
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1894. Since White’s appointment, however, the number of Roman Catholic Justices on the Court
has steadily increased. Between 1881 and 1952, 4 (9.5%) of the 42 Justices appointed were
Roman Catholic.45 Between 1953 and the present, 7 (29.2%) of the 24 Justices appointed have
been Roman Catholic. When Samuel Alito, a Roman Catholic, joined the Court in 2006 to replace
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, an Episcopalian, a majority of the Court’s membership was Roman
Catholic for the first time in the nation’s history. This Roman Catholic majority grew from 5 to 6
justices with the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor.
Although the first Roman Catholic Justice was appointed to the Court in 1836, the first Jewish
Justice did not join the Court until 1916, with President Woodrow Wilson’s appointment of Louis
Brandeis. Brandeis was branded as a “radical” due to his socially conscious legal work and was
the target of anti-Semitic forces.46 Although Brandeis neither appeared at nor commented on the
proceedings, the Senate Judiciary devoted 19 days of hearings to the nomination—the longest of
any of Supreme Court nominee.47
The next Jewish members of the Court were not appointed until the 1930s, with the appointment
of Justices Benjamin Cardozo in 1932 to replace Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Felix Frankfurter in
1939 to replace Cardozo upon his untimely death.48 Unlike Justice Brandeis, Justices Cardozo and
Frankfurter received less contentious and, as a result, much shorter confirmation hearings.
Cardozo’s 1932 confirmation process lasted only nine days from Senate receipt of the nomination
to confirmation by unanimous voice vote.49 Only one of those days was dedicated to a hearing
before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like Brandeis, Cardozo chose not to appear before the
committee.50 The process of appointing Justice Frankfurter took 33% longer (12, as compared
with 9, days) and included 3 days of public hearings before his eventual confirmation, also by
voice vote on the floor of the Senate. Unlike Brandeis and Cardozo, Frankfurter chose to testify
before the Senate Judiciary Committee.51
Since the 1930s, however, public hearings have become standard practice, and nominees,
regardless of the level of controversy surrounding their nomination, routinely appear before the
Judiciary Committee.52 The nominations of the two Jewish Justices currently serving on the
45 These Justices were Joseph McKenna of California and Edward D. White of Louisiana. McKenna was appointed by
President William McKinley in 1898; White was appointed by President Grover Cleveland in 1894.
46 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, pp. 182-185. Additionally, Justice Brandeis encountered some hostility on the
Court itself. Justice James McReynolds, appointed by President Wilson in 1914, was reported to be anti-Semitic and
“snubbed” Brandeis for that reason. See also David Burner, The Justices of the Supreme Court, 1789-1969: Their Lives
and Major Opinions, ed. Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, vol. 3 (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1969), p.
2023.
47 Brandeis’s confirmation hearings were also the first ever public hearings held by the Judiciary Committee to
examine the nomination of an individual to the Supreme Court. Only one other nominee, George Williams, nominated
to the position of Chief Justice by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873, had ever received a hearing. Unlike Brandeis’s
hearing, Williams’s confirmation hearing was closed to the public. See CRS Report RL33225, Supreme Court
Nominations, 1789 - 2009: Actions by the Senate, the Judiciary Committee, and the President.
48 Cardozo was appointed by President Herbert Hoover shortly before the end of his first and final term in 1932.
Frankfurter was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, a close friend, after Cardozo’s death in 1939.
49 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, p. 206.
50 Ibid., p. 222.
51 Ibid. Abraham notes that Frankfurter’s appearance before the committee was the first since the nomination of Harlan
Fiske Stone to the position of Associate Justice in 1925.
52 CRS Report RL33225, Supreme Court Nominations, 1789 - 2009: Actions by the Senate, the Judiciary Committee,
and the President.
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Court, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were subject to four days of public hearings
each.53 Both attended those hearings.
On April 9, 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens, the only protestant Christian Justice, will retire at the
end of the Court’s current term.54 Justice Stevens’s pending retirement raises the possibility that,
for the first time, no Justice on the Court would identify as a protestant Christian. While
Presidents once took religion into account in order to preserve a “Jewish seat,” as President
Franklin D. Roosevelt did in his 1939 appointment of Felix Frankfurter, or to avoid “religious or
sectarian repercussions,” a worry of President Herbert Hoover’s in his 1932 selection of
Benjamin Cardozo,55 it is unclear to what extent President Obama would or should take religion
into account in choosing Justice Stevens’s replacement.
Professional Background
The men and women appointed to the Supreme Court have held a variety of professional
backgrounds. While 64% of all Justices appointed to the Court have had some form of judicial
experience, Justices have also held positions in federal, state, and local governments, and in the
private sector. Those positions have ranged from legislator, to professional athlete,56 to President
of the United States.57
53 The average length of a public hearing, for all public hearings held between 1916 and the present, is 3.97 days. In the
last 20 years, the average length of public hearings has increased by almost a full day to 4.91 days.
54 Letter from John Paul Stevens, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, to Barack H. Obama, President of the United
States, April 9, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/09/us/politics/AP-US-Stevens-Letter.html?ref=
aponline. For several months prior to his announcement, observers of the Court remarked that Justice Stevens’s
decision to hire only one clerk (the total number allowed to retired Justices) as opposed to four (the total number
allowed to active Justices) suggested that, at the age of 89, he was seriously considering retirement. When asked about
his retirement plans in a March 22, 2010, interview, Justice Stevens remarked, “Well, I still have my options open.
When I decided to just hire one clerk, three of my clerks last year said they’d work for me next year if I wanted them
to. So I have my options still. And then I’ll have to decide soon.” Justice Stevens indicated that he would announce his
decision by the first or second week in April and guaranteed that he would be retiring “within the next three years.”
Jeffrey Toobin, “Profiles: After Stevens: What will the Supreme Court be like without its liberal leader?” The New
Yorker, March 22, 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/22/100322fa_fact_toobin. See also Robert
Barnes, “Justice Stevens Hires Just One Clerk for 2010 Term,” The Washington Post, Sept. 3, 2009,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/02/AR2009090203857.htm; Adam Liptak, “Supreme
Court Memo: A Justice Slows His Hiring, and Some Wonder About His Future,” The New York Times, Sept. 2, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/us/03stevens.html.
55 Henry J. Abraham, Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 180.
56 Byron “Whizzer” White, appointed by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, was a Heisman Trophy winning football
player at the University of Colorado and played professional football for the Pittsburgh Pirates (now Steelers). During
his one season in professional football, he was the highest-paid player of his day. See, for more information, Yalof, The
Pursuit of Justices, pp. 73-76, and Cushman, “Byron R. White” in The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated
Biographies, 1789-1993, pp. 461-465.
57 Appointed by President Warren G. Harding in 1921, William Howard Taft served as the 27th President of the United
States (1909-1913) prior to becoming the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
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Supreme Court Justices: Demographic Characteristics, Professions, and Education
Figure 2. Prior Experience of Supreme Court Justices
Chief Justices and Associate Justices, 1789-2010
100%
90%
94.6%
80%
70%
ces
60%
64.0%
sti
u
50%
f J
50.5%
o
40%
44.1%
%
30%
35.1%
27.0%
20%
10%
0%
Private
Government
Judge
Legislator
Governm ent
Military
Practice
Attorney
Executive
Veteran
Attorney
Types of Experience
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov) and Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court
Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
Overwhelmingly, Supreme Court Justices come to the bench with some form of non-judicial legal
experience. As illustrated in Figure 2, 105 (94.6%) of the 111 Justices appointed to the Supreme
Court have engaged in private practice, although only 49 (44.1%) had served as an attorney for a
federal, state, or local entity. Across its history, 71 (64.0%) Justices came to the Supreme Court
with prior judicial experience in a lower federal or state court. A smaller number of Justices (56 or
50.5%) have come to the bench with prior legislative experience and fewer (30 or 27.0%) have
possessed executive experience. While experience in private practice and prior judicial
experience have been the most common employment patterns among Supreme Court Justices, 39
(35.1%) have also served in the military.
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Supreme Court Justices: Demographic Characteristics, Professions, and Education
Figure 3. Prior Occupations of Supreme Court Justices Over Time
By Appointment Date and Type of Experience, 1789-2010
100%
90%
80%
70%
s
60%
e
ic
st
50%
Ju
of
%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1789-1850
1851-1880
1881-1952
1953-2010
Years
Private Practice Attorney
Government Attorney
Judge
Legislator
Government Executive
Military Veteran
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov) and Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court
Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
Experience in Private Practice
As indicated in Figure 3, the vast majority of Court appointees have spent some time in private
practice. From 1789-1850, all but two Supreme Court Justices had been employed in private
practice.58 From 1851-1952, all 56 appointees to the Court were engaged in private practice at
some point in their careers. In the past 56 years, only four (16.7%) of the 24 Justices had never
worked for a private law firm. Justice Clarence Thomas was the first in 180 years to possess no
experience in private practice. Notably, like Justice Thomas, three of the next four appointees—
Ginsburg, Breyer, and Alito—also lacked experience in private practice. In contrast, the most
recent appointee, Sonia Sotomayor, spent eight years in private practice at the firm of Parvia &
Harcourt in New York, which places her experience in line with that of the vast majority of
Supreme Court Justices.
58 The first of these Justices to be appointed was Samuel Chase of Maryland, who was appointed by George
Washington in 1796. The second was Chase’s replacement, Gabriel Duvall (also of Maryland), who was appointed by
James Madison in 1811.
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Experience as a Government Attorney
Of the 111 individuals appointed to the Supreme Court since 1789, 49 (44.1%) have served as
government attorneys. This category is a broad one and encompasses any position in which the
Justice may have served as a counsel or attorney for a local, state, or federal agency or institution.
For example, included in this category are Justice Hugo Black, who worked as a prosecuting
attorney in Birmingham, Alabama, from 1914 through 1917; Justice Thurgood Marshall, who
served as the solicitor general of the United States from 1965-1967; Chief Justice Oliver
Ellsworth, who served as a state attorney in Hartford County, Connecticut, from 1777-1785; and
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who served as an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special
Prosecution Force in 1973 and a special counsel for the Administrative Practices Subcommittee
of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1974-1975.
Justices with experience as United States attorneys are also included in this category.59 Of the 49
Justices who worked as government attorneys, only four were U.S. attorneys. The first U.S.
attorney to join the Court was Noah Swayne, appointed in 1862; the second and third were
Stanley Matthews and William Moody, in 1881 and 1906. The most recently appointed former
U.S. attorney, Samuel Alito, was confirmed in 2006.
Of the 31 individuals appointed to the Court between 1789 and 1850, 9 (23.0%) had prior
experience as government attorneys. Of these 9, 5 served as the attorney general for their
respective states for at least one year,60 3 served as state district attorneys,61 and 1—Chief Justice
Roger B. Taney—served as the Attorney General of the United States. The number of Supreme
Court Justices with this type of experience decreased slightly between 1851 and 1880. Of the 14
individuals appointed during this period, 3 (21.4%) had worked as government attorneys. Two of
these Justices served as attorney generals of their respective states, one of whom also served as
the Attorney General of the United States.62 The remaining Justice served as both a county
prosecutor and a U.S. attorney prior to joining the Court.63
59 U.S. attorneys prosecute criminal offenses against the United States, prosecute or defend for the government all suits
or proceedings in which the United States is concerned, and collect debts owed the federal government which are
administratively uncollectible. U.S. attorneys are appointed to four-year terms and serve at the pleasure of the
President. There are, in total, 93 U.S. attorneys: one for each federal judicial district, with the exception of the District
of Guam and the District of the Northern Mariana Islands, which share a U.S. attorney. For more information on the
responsibilities of U.S. attorneys, see 28 U.S.C. 547.
60 Associate Justices James Iredell and Alfred Moore both served as the attorney general of North Carolina. Iredell
served in that positions from 1779 through 1781, and Moore served from 1782 through 1791. Associate Justice William
Paterson served as the attorney general of New Jersey from 1776 through 1783. Justice John Rutledge, who served as
both an Associate Justice and, for a brief period of time, Chief Justice, served as the Attorney General Pro Tem from
1764 through 1765, before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney served as
the attorney general of Maryland from 1827 through 1831.
61 Justices Henry Baldwin, John Catron, and Robert Trimble served as district attorneys in Pennsylvania, Tennessee,
and Kentucky, respectively. Additionally, Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth served as a state attorney in Hartford County,
Connecticut from 1777 through 1785.
62 Justice Nathan Clifford served as both the attorney general for the state of Maine (1834-1838) and the U.S. Attorney
General (1846-1848); Justice John Marshall Harlan served as the attorney general for the state of Kentucky (1863-
1867).
63Justice Noah Swayne served as both the prosecuting attorney for Coshocton County, Ohio (1826-1829), and U.S.
attorney for the district of Ohio (1830-1841).
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Since 1851, the percentage of Justices with experience as government attorneys has increased
dramatically, rising from 21.4% of the Justices appointed between 1851 and 1880 to 62.5% of the
Justices appointed since 1953. Of the 42 Justices appointed from 1881 through 1952, 22 (52.4%)
served as government attorneys at some point in their careers. Of these 22, 15 (68.2%) held
multiple positions as government attorneys at local, state, and federal levels of government. For
example, Justice Stanley Matthews served as both the assistant prosecutor of Hamilton County,
Ohio (1845), and U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio (1858-1861). Justice Joseph
McKenna was a district attorney in Solano County, California (1866-1870), and the Attorney
General of the United States (1897).
Since 1953, 15 of the 24 appointees (62.5%) came to the bench with prior experience as
government attorneys. As in the previous period, a majority of these Justices held multiple
positions as government attorneys. Of the 15 appointed with such experience, 8 (53.3%) held
multiple positions. Chief Justice Earl Warren, for example, held five different prosecutorial
positions, including that of city attorney for Oakland, California; district attorney for Alameda
County, California; and attorney general for the state of California.
Six of the nine members of the current Court also served as government attorneys. In addition to
serving as a U.S. attorney, Justice Samuel Alito worked as an assistant U.S. attorney and in the
offices of the Attorney General and solicitor general. Like Justice Alito, Chief Justice John
Roberts also served in a variety of government attorney positions, most notably as an associate
counsel to President Ronald Reagan in the White House Counsel’s Office. Justice Stephen Breyer,
in addition to the service described above, was a special assistant to the assistant U.S. attorney
general for antitrust and the chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Justice
Clarence Thomas spent time as assistant attorney general for the state of Missouri from 1974
through 1977. Justice Antonin Scalia worked as an assistant attorney general in the U.S.
Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel from 1974 through 1977. Recently appointed
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was an assistant district attorney in the New York County District
Attorney’s Office under Robert Morgenthau from 1979 through 1984.
Judicial Experience
While prior judicial experience has been an important factor in the modern confirmation process,
presidential emphasis on such experience in the selection of Justices has varied over the history of
the Court.64 Preference for judicial experience, whether state or federal, can be explained in part
by the changing character of the federal judiciary. Congress created the basic organizational
structure of the federal judiciary—a structure that still exists to this day—with the Judiciary Act
of 1789. The Judiciary Act divided the new nation into 13 districts, for which district court
64 This report does not examine whether those appointed to the Chief Justiceship possessed experience as an Associate
Justice. Additionally, Chief Justices were occasionally elevated from the ranks of Associate Justices or had prior
experience as an Associate Justice, as was the case with Chief Justices John Rutledge, Edward White, Charles Evans
Hughes, Harlan Fiske Stone, and William Rehnquist. John Rutledge served as an Associate Justice from 1789 through
1791, resigning to serve as the Chief Justice of the South Carolina Court of Common Pleas. In 1795, George
Washington appointed Rutledge to be Chief Justice via a recess appointment after the resignation of John Jay. Rutledge
was not confirmed by the Senate and was forced to resign his position that same year. Charles Evans Hughes served as
an Associate Justice from 1910 through 1916, when he resigned to run as the Republican candidate for President. After
losing to Woodrow Wilson, Hughes went into private practice and later served as U.S. Secretary of State before being
appointed to the position of Chief Justice in 1930. Chief Justices White, Stone, and Rehnquist were all elevated directly
from the position of Associate Justice.
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judgeships were created. District courts held original jurisdiction over admiralty and maritime
cases, as well as some minor civil and criminal cases. The appointed district court judge sat with
a Supreme Court Justice to constitute the circuit court for the district.65 Circuit courts served as
trial courts for “most criminal cases, for suits between citizens of different states (diversity cases),
and for civil suits initiated by the United States.” Circuit courts also “exercised appellate
jurisdiction over all but the smallest admiralty cases and other civil suits that originated in the
U.S. district courts.”66 In order to exercise this appellate jurisdiction, however, a Supreme Court
Justice was required to preside over the proceedings.
In a time of poor roads, slow transportation, and rampant disease, “riding circuit,” or traveling
from the nation’s capital to districts to hold circuit court, was an extreme hardship for Supreme
Court Justices.67 For example, Justice James Wilson died in 1798 after contracting malaria while
riding circuit.68 These hardships and an increase in the federal caseload led Congress to reform
the circuit courts. In 1869, Congress created separate circuit court judgeships for each of the
circuits. These new judges, unlike the district court judges operating in the circuit, were
authorized to conduct appellate business, with the district court judge, in the absence of a
Supreme Court Justice. The circuit courts were stripped of their appellate jurisdiction with the
creation of the modern Courts of Appeals in 1891 and eventually abolished in January of 1912.69
65 The Judiciary Act of 1789 required that two Supreme Court Justices sit with a district court judge to constitute the
circuit court. This requirement was changed in 1793 to allow one Justice and a district court judge to constitute a circuit
court. Federal Judicial Center, “Courts of the Federal Judiciary: U.S. Circuit Courts and the Federal Judiciary,”
http://www.fjc.gov/public/home.nsf/hisc.
66 See Federal Judicial Center, “Courts of the Federal Judiciary: U.S. Circuit Courts and the Federal Judiciary.”
67 The location of the nation’s capital has changed several times, and the meeting place of the Supreme Court has
changed with it. The first meeting of the Court occurred on February 2, 1790, in the Merchants Exchange Building in
New York City. Later that year, the Court moved with the federal government to Philadelphia, where the Court met
first in Independence Hall and later in City Hall. In 1800, the Court, along with the executive and legislative branches,
moved permanently to the District of Columbia. See U.S. Supreme Court, “The Court Building,”
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/courtbuilding.pdf.
68 Wilson was one of the original six justices of the Supreme Court, appointed by George Washington in 1789. See
Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Sara C. Benesh, The Supreme Court in the American Legal System (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 216.
69 From 1891 through 1912, the circuit courts retained their original jurisdiction and served as trial courts for some
types of federal cases. See Federal Judicial Center, “Courts of the Federal Judiciary: U.S. Circuit Courts and the
Federal Judiciary,” http://www.fjc.gov/public/home.nsf/hisc.
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Figure 4. Percentage of Total Justices Appointed with Judicial Experience
By Appointment Date and Type of Experience, 1789-2010
80%
70%
60%
50%
s
e
ic
st 40%
Ju
of
% 30%
20%
10%
0%
1789-1850
1851-1880
1881-1952
1953-2010
Year
None
State
U.S. District
U.S. Circuit
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov) and Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court
Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
Notes: Separate circuit court judgeships were first created by the Judiciary Act of 1801 but abolished 13 months
later with the Judiciary Act of 1802. Separate circuit court judgeships were not again created until 1869, when a
single circuit court judgeship was created in each of the geographical circuits. As a result, no judge could have
been a circuit court judge before 1869, precluding the elevation of a judge with such experience before that
time.
It is unsurprising, then, that few Supreme Court Justices appointed between 1789 and 1850
possessed district court experience and none possessed circuit court experience. Justices
appointed during this period did, however, possess extensive state judicial experience. Twenty-
two (71.0%) of the 31 Justices appointed during this period, as illustrated in Figure 4, served on a
colonial or state court, whereas only 3 (9.7%) served on a federal district court and 8 (25.8%)
lacked judicial experience entirely. Between 1789 and 1850, the percentage of sitting Justices
with state judicial experience, for all but three years,70 never dropped below 50.0%, as indicated
in Figure 5. Usually, it was much higher. Justices’ state court experience was, in many cases,
quite extensive. The most experienced, William Cushing, served as a judge in one capacity or
another in Massachusetts for 29 years, from 1760 to 1789, at which time he was appointed to the
Supreme Court. Only 8 (25.8%) of the Justices appointed during this period possessed no judicial
experience.
70 The percentage of sitting Justices with state court experience dropped to 44.4% between 1842 and 1845.
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Figure 5. Percentage of Sitting Justices with Prior Judicial Experience
By Type of Experience, 1789-2010
100%
80%
s
e
60%
c
sti
f Ju
o
40%
%
Creation of modern
U.S. Courts of Appeals
20%
0%
1809
1859
1909
1959
2009
Year
U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals
State/Local Courts
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov) and Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court
Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
Notes: This graph displays the percentage of sitting Justices with either state court or circuit court experience.
Unlike Figure 4, this graph displays the percentage of Justices serving on the Court at any particular time in
history. For example, in 2007, the graph indicates that 11.1% of sitting Justices (one of nine) possessed state
court experience, and 100.0% (nine of nine) possessed circuit court experience.
While circuit courts have existed since the Judiciary Act of 1789, separate circuit court judgeships were not
created until 1869. The modern courts of appeals were created by the Judiciary Act of 1891, commonly known
as the Evarts Act. Thus, the dashed line representing the percentage of sitting Justices with circuit court
experience does not begin until 1869. The solid vertical line (placed at 1891) indicates the creation date of
modern circuit courts of appeals.
From 1851 through 1880, only one appointee had served on a U.S. circuit court and none on a
U.S. district court. As in the previous period, Justices accrued judicial experience at the state, as
opposed to the federal, level. Of the 14 Justices appointed during this period, 6 (42.8%) were
formerly state court judges, although only one was elevated directly from that position.71 During
this time, no fewer than 50.0%, and as many as 70.0%, of sitting Justices possessed state court
experience, as illustrated in Figure 5.
71 Justice Stephen Field was elevated from the California supreme court, on which he had served as Chief Justice, to the
U.S. Supreme Court by Abraham Lincoln in 1863.
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Despite the continued appointment of Justices with state court experience between 1851 and
1880, Presidents appeared to emphasize characteristics other than judicial experience in choosing
nominees. Appointees were selected, in part, because they were perceived as capable of
maintaining public respect for the Court in an increasingly hostile political environment and, in
many cases, had demonstrated personal loyalty to the President. Most importantly, Presidents
sought appointees supportive of the Administration’s agenda with respect to the growing sectional
tensions prior to the Civil War, during the conflict, and through the traumatic reconstruction
process that followed.72 Changes such as these in Presidents’ selection criteria may explain why
only 50.0% of Justices appointed between 1851 and 1880 possessed state or federal judicial
experience, as compared with 74.2% in the previous period.
President Millard Fillmore’s selection of Benjamin R. Curtis in 1851 illustrates this shift. Curtis,
who lacked state and federal judicial experience, possessed characteristics Fillmore perceived to
be more important in the difficult political climate of the 1850s, such as “strength of character,
and the potential for judicial presence [as well as] an understanding of contemporary history and
politics.” Fillmore additionally required that his nominee be a “Whig, a comparatively young
man, and a New Englander.”73 One scholar noted that, for President Abraham Lincoln, “the effect
a proposed member might have on the conduct of the [Civil War] was of paramount importance.
All other considerations were secondary,” including prior judicial experience.74
Between 1881 and 1952, appointees with state court experience declined slightly from 42.8% in
the previous period to 40.5%. Conversely, appointees with federal court experience increased
substantially. Four (9.5%) of the 42 Justices appointed possessed federal district court experience,
and 11 (26.2%) possessed federal circuit court experience. One Justice, Samuel Blatchford,
appointed by President Chester Arthur in 1882, possessed both district and circuit court
experience.
Presidents during this period, however, did not uniformly consider judicial experience as
necessary for appointment to the Court, which may explain why 19 (42.5%) of the 42 appointees
lacked lower federal or state court experience. While the first President in this period, Chester
Arthur, appeared to consider such experience important,75 his successor, President Grover
Cleveland, the first Democrat elected to the presidency since 1860, did not. Cleveland sought
nominees who, like himself, were “Democrat[s] in good standing,” were “known to him
personally,” shared his policy preferences, and hailed from “an appropriate geographic area.”76
Although Cleveland did not appear to place importance on prior judicial experience, two of his
four appointees to the Court did serve as lower court judges. Of the two, only one, Rufus
Peckham of New York, was elevated from a state court. The other, Edward Douglass White, was
a sitting U.S. Senator at the time of his appointment.
Unlike his predecessor, the selection criteria of President Benjamin Harrison emphasized not only
that the appointee should possess similar policy preferences and party affiliation as the President,
but also that nominees should be “experienced practicing lawyers and judges.”77 All but one of
72 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, pp. 110, 114-115, 117.
73 Ibid., p. 110.
74 Ibid., p. 117.
75 Ibid., pp. 137-139.
76 Ibid., p. 140. In particular, Abraham noted that President Cleveland’s criteria were “easy to behold.”
77 Ibid., p. 148.
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Harrison’s four appointees possessed judicial experience. The next two Presidents, William
McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, deemphasized judicial experience in their selection criteria,
although Roosevelt delineated “competence” an important criterion. Roosevelt was the first
President to “go on public record with a policy of downgrading geography” as an important
consideration in the selection of Supreme Court Justices.78
President William H. Taft, who would later serve as the Court’s Chief Justice, explicitly
emphasized judicial experience,79 with five of six appointees possessing either state or federal
experience or both. President Woodrow Wilson, Taft’s successor, deemphasized judicial
experience as a selection criterion and selected Supreme Court Justices who were personal or
professional acquaintances and who possessed similar political opinions.80
Presidents who followed Wilson continued this trend. Only half of Warren G. Harding’s
appointees possessed any form of judicial experience, and Calvin Coolidge’s lone appointee,
Harlan Fiske Stone, had no judicial experience. Of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s eight Associate
Justice appointees, only three had any form of judicial experience and, of these, just one served
on the federal bench.81 Only one of President Harry Truman’s three Associate Justice appointees
possessed judicial experience.82
Both Roosevelt and Truman, however, chose Chief Justices with federal judicial experience,
although such considerations, reportedly, were not important in their selections of Associate
Justices. Roosevelt chose to elevate Harlan Fiske Stone, who, while not having any lower court
experience, had served on the Supreme Court for over 16 years before his elevation. Truman
appointed Frederick M. Vinson, who had served for almost six years on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia, to the position after Chief Justice Stone’s death in 1946.83
Although Presidents increasingly selected appointees with federal judicial experience during this
period, the Justices’ length of tenure on lower federal courts varied widely. Most Justices
possessed less than 10 years of federal judicial service, with 10 of the 14 Justices having served
between 2.0 to 8.4 years in the federal district or circuit courts. A smaller number possessed well
above 10 years of service, with four Justices having served between 14.7 and 16.7 years before
their elevation to the Court. Of these four, one served entirely on a circuit court, two on district
courts, and one on both district and circuit courts.
78 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, p. 157.
79 Ibid., p. 167.
80 Ibid., pp. 176-177.
81 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s one appointee with federal judicial experience was Wiley B. Rutledge, who had served on
the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
82 Truman’s sole Associate Justice appointee with judicial experience was Sherman Minton, who had served on the
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
83 During this period, President Herbert Hoover’s appointees were the exception to this trend. Hoover reportedly sought
candidates with prior judicial experience, and two of his three appointees had served as judges at the state or federal
level. Charles Evans Hughes, Hoover’s choice for Chief Justice, had previously served as an Associate Justice, and
Benjamin Cardozo, one of Hoover’s selections for Associate Justice, was a widely regarded jurist on the supreme court
of New York. Hoover’s only selection without judicial experience, Justice Owen Roberts, was selected after John J.
Parker, a sitting judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, was rejected by the Senate. See Abraham,
Justices and Presidents, pp. 198-207.
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Since 1953, most Presidents have tended to emphasize the importance of judicial experience,
especially in the federal circuit courts. Immediately prior to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s
appointment of Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1953, only one of nine sitting Justices possessed
state court experience and two possessed circuit court experience; none had served on a federal
district court (see Figure 5). Following Warren’s appointment, however, the Court began to
consider more cases that were widely publicized and had widespread, controversial social
consequences, contrary to Eisenhower’s reported desire that the Chief Justice reflect his own
“moderate progressivism, common sense, high ideals, and ‘absence of extreme views.’” Due to
his disappointment with Warren’s leadership, however, Eisenhower required that his next
appointee have prior judicial experience so that he would have an “inkling of [the nominee’s]
philosophy.”84
Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, unlike Eisenhower, purportedly rewarded
personal loyalty in their nominations to the Court; judicial experience was not required.85 Such
“patronage” appointment encountered very little opposition in the Senate in the early and mid-
1960s.86 By the late 1960s, however, the confirmation process had become very contentious due
to “resentment against the [liberal jurisprudence of the] Supreme Court,”87 and patronage
appointments, such as Johnson’s nomination of his close friend and sitting Associate Justice Abe
Fortas to Chief Justice, began to encounter heavy opposition in the Senate.88
Presidents following Johnson, as a result, began to consistently favor nominees with prior judicial
experience, especially those with service in the federal circuit courts, in order to both better
predict nominees’ behavior once confirmed89 and avoid criticism in the press and opposition in
the Senate.90 Such experience has increasingly become an almost standard background feature of
every Supreme Court nominee. As one scholar noted, “[F]ederal circuit court judges have become
the ‘darlings’ of the selection process.”91 Of the 24 Justices appointed since 1953, 16 (66.7%) of
the 24 Justices served on a federal circuit court, 2 of whom also served on federal district courts92
and 1 on a state court.93 Only 3 (8.3%) of the 24 appointed during this period possessed state
84 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, p. 254.
85 For a discussion of the use of patronage politics in Kennedy’s and Johnson’s selections of Supreme Court nominees,
see Yalof, “Chapter Four: Kennedy and Johnson Restore the Politics of Patronage,” The Pursuit of Justices, pp. 70-96.
86 Both of Kennedy’s appointees and Johnson’s first nomination of Abe Fortas to Associate Justice encountered very
little opposition, with their confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee lasting no more than two
days. For more information regarding the Supreme Court appointment process generally and the length of nominations
specifically, see CRS Report RL31989, Supreme Court Appointment Process: Roles of the President, Judiciary
Committee, and Senate; and CRS Report RL33225, Supreme Court Nominations, 1789 - 2009: Actions by the Senate,
the Judiciary Committee, and the President, respectively.
87 Yalof, The Pursuit of Justices, p.130.
88 Other problems, such as Justice Fortas’s alleged financial improprieties and President Johnson’s
“lame duck” status complicated an already hostile Senate reception to the nomination. See Yalof, “Chapter Four:
Kennedy and Johnson Restore the Politics of Patronage,” The Pursuit of Justices, pp. 70-96.
89 Yalof, Pursuit of Justices, p. 70.
90 Ibid., p. 121.
91 Ibid., p. 170.
92 The two Justices with both federal district and circuit court experience are Justice Charles Whittaker, appointed in
1957 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Sonia Sotomayor, appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama.
93 Justice David H. Souter, appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, served on both the New Hampshire
Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
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court experience. Whereas in 1953 only one sitting Justice possessed federal circuit court
experience, all nine current Justices have such experience (see Figure 5).94
Most Justices appointed since 1953 possessed less than 10 years of federal judicial experience,
although the range and minimum length of tenure is shorter than in the previous period. Nine of
the 16 Justices appointed since 1953 served between 0.5 and 5.2 years on lower federal courts
before their elevation, as compared with 2.0 to 8.4 years in the previous period. Seven of the 16
Justices served for more than 10 years on the lower federal court, with tenures ranging between
10.7 and 17.0 years. Four of the last five appointees each served as federal judges for more than
13 years before their elevation to the Court.
The most recent appointee, Sonia Sotomayor, possesses more federal lower court experience than
any Justice in American history.95 In announcing her nomination, President Obama emphasized
Sonia Sotomayor’s qualifications as a former U.S. district court judge and current U.S. circuit
court judge. The President explained, “Over a distinguished career that spans three decades,
Judge Sotomayor has worked at almost every level of our judicial system, providing her with a
depth of experience and a breadth of perspective that will be invaluable as a Supreme Court
justice.” The President continued by stressing that “[w]alking in the door, she would bring more
experience on the bench and more varied experience on the bench than anyone currently serving
on the United States Supreme Court had when they were appointed.”96
Prior Political Experience
Legislative Experience
Legislative experience among Supreme Court Justices has exhibited a consistent decline since the
middle of the 19th century. Prior to 1850, the appointment of Justices with legislative experience
at the federal, state, or local level was not uncommon. From 1789-1850, 25 (80.6%) of the 31
Justices appointed had some form of legislative experience. Twenty-four Justices (77.4%) had
served in a state or colonial legislative body, 6 (19.4%) in the Continental Congress, 3 (25.8%)
were previously U.S. Senators, and 8 (6.3%) were previously Members of the U.S. House of
Representatives.
When choosing nominees for the Supreme Court, President George Washington desired, among
other things, that his nominees be politically involved in their local communities and home states
and sought nominees with both judicial and legislative experience.97 Of the 10 appointments
made by Washington, 9 had prior legislative experience. Like Washington, his successor,
94 Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts served on the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; Justice Stephen Breyer on the First Circuit; Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the
Second Circuit; Justice Samuel Alito on the Third Circuit; Justice John Paul Stevens on the Seventh Circuit; and Justice
Anthony Kennedy on the Ninth Circuit.
95 Sonia Sotomayor served on two federal courts before her appointment to the Supreme Court: (1) the District Court
for the Southern District of New York for 6.2 years and (2) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for 10.8
years. On the day of her confirmation, her combined federal service totaled 17.0 years.
96 See U.S. President (Obama), “Remarks on the Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court Associate
Justice, May 26, 2009,” Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, DCPD-200900402, at http://www.gpo.gov/
fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900402/html/DCPD-200900402.htm
97 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, pp. 72, 77-78.
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President John Adams, reportedly viewed public service as an important qualification for a
Justice. Two of his three appointees, including Chief Justice John Marshall, possessed either state
or federal legislative experience.98
However, while President Washington was purported to have valued both state political service
and prior judicial experience as distinct qualifications, some later Presidents appeared not to
distinguish between the two when considering potential nominees for the Court. For example,
James Monroe was reported to have viewed judicial experience as interchangeable with “other
high public-service experience,” such as executive or legislative experience, when determining
the qualifications of nominees.99 Similarly, President Andrew Jackson was reported to have
valued public service, but he did not emphasize judicial experience as a separate qualification
from legislative experience.100
After 1850, however, the percentage of Supreme Court Justices with legislative experience began
to decline. Between 1851 and 1880, 11 (78.6%) of the 14 Justices appointed had some form of
prior legislative experience. In particular, nine (64.3%) had served in their state’s legislature or
another local legislative body, two (14.3%) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and two
(14.3%) as U.S. Senators.
Whereas 71.4% of Justices appointed between 1850 and 1881 held some form of legislative
position, only 40.5% (17 of 42) Justices appointed between 1881 and 1952 had similar legislative
experience. Six (14.3%) had served as Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 7 (16.7%)
as U.S. Senators, and 12 (28.6%) as legislators in state or local legislative bodies.
Since 1953, only 3 (12.5%) of the 24 Justices appointed possessed any form of legislative
experience, and none served as Members of the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate.
One of these two Justices, Lewis Powell, served as chairman of the Richmond Public School
Board from 1952 through 1961. Another, Potter Stewart, served on the Cincinnati, Ohio, city
council from 1950 through 1953. The third, Sandra Day O’Connor, served in the Arizona Senate
from 1969 through 1975. Following this trend, President Obama’s appointee to the Court, Justice
Sonia Sotomayor, has no prior legislative experience.
98 Abraham, Justices and Presidents, p. 80.
99 Ibid., p. 91.
100 Ibid., p. 96.
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Figure 6. Legislative Experience Over Time
By Appointment Date and Type of Experience, 1789-2010
90%
80%
70%
60%
s
e
ic 50%
st
Ju
40%
% of
30%
20%
10%
0%
1789-1850
1851-1880
1881-1952
1953-2010
Years
U.S. House
U.S. Senate
State/Local/Other
Total Legislative Experience
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov).
Notes: The category “State/Local/Other” also includes service in the Continental Congress. In most cases, if a
Justice has served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, he has also served as a member of a colonial or
state legislature. Justice James Wilson, the fourth Justice appointed by Washington, served in the Continental
Congress but no other state legislative body.
Executive Experience
Table 1 lists four types of executive experience Supreme Court Justices have possessed when
appointed to the Supreme Court: experience as a mayor, governor or lieutenant governor,
presidential appointee, and U.S. President. Some Justices have served in more than one of these
positions. For example, Chief Justice William Howard Taft served as the civil governor of the
Philippine Islands, Secretary of War, and President of the United States before being appointed
Chief Justice by President Warren G. Harding in 1921.
Between 1789 and 1952, more than 40% of the Justices appointed to the Court possessed some
form of executive experience. Across this 163-year period, 11 governors or lieutenant governors
and 29 former presidential appointees were appointed to the Court.101 As with legislative
101 Justices who formerly served as presidential appointees have served as Cabinet members, ambassadors, solicitors
(continued...)
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experience, however, a smaller number of nominees with executive experience were appointed to
the Court in the last 56 years. One Justice, Earl Warren, served as governor of California prior to
his 1953 appointment as Chief Justice by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. Another, Arthur
Goldberg, served as Secretary of Labor when appointed to the Court by John F. Kennedy in 1962.
The other six Justices held positions such as United States attorney, chairman of the
Administrative Office of United States, and chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.
Table 1. Executive Experience of Supreme Court Justices
By Appointment Date and Type of Experience from 1789-2010
Mayors
Governors/ Presidential
U.S.
Total
Lt Governors
Appointees Presidents Executive
1789-1850
1 (3.2%)
5 (16.1%)
8 (25.0%)
—
12 (38.7%)
(N=31)
1851-1880
2 (14.3%)
2 (14.3%)
5 (35.7%)
—
8 (57.1%)
(N=14)
1881-1952
—
4 (9.5%)
16 (38.1%)
1 (2.3%)a 16
(38.1%)
(N=42)
1953-2010
—
1 (4.2%)
7 (29.2%)
—
8 (33.3%)
(N=24)
Total
3 (2.7%)
12 (10.8%)
36 (32.4%)
1 (0.9%)
44 (39.6%)
(N=111)
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov) and Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court
Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
Notes: The percentages listed in each row indicate the percentage of Justices appointed in that period who
possessed the characteristic of interest. “N” indicates the number of Justices appointed during each time period.
a. William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, is the only former President to be appointed
to the Court.
Prior Military Experience
The number of Supreme Court Justices with military experience has fluctuated over time, and
military service patterns of Justices reflect the history of American military engagement at home
and abroad. Since 1789, the United States has engaged in five declared wars with foreign nations,
the Civil War, and prior to this time period, the Revolutionary War.102 Of the 111 Justices
(...continued)
general, and department heads within agencies, to name a few. For example, Justice William O. Douglas, appointed by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, had previously served as both a member and chairman of the Securities and
Exchange Commission.
102 “From the Washington Administration to the present, there have been eleven separate formal declarations of war
against foreign nations enacted by Congress and the President, encompassing five declared wars” These wars are the
War of 1812 (declared in 1812), the Mexican-American War (1846), the Spanish-American War (1898), World War I
(1917), and World War II (1941, 1942). The United States participated in several “extended military engagements that
might be considered undeclared wars,” including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War of 1991. “In
addition, Congress has adopted a number of authorizations for the use of military force, the most recent being the joint
resolution enacted on October 16, 2002, authorizing the use of military force against Iraq.” See CRS Report RL31133,
(continued...)
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appointed to the Supreme Court, 39 (35.1%) have served in various branches of the military
during times of both war and peace, serving in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil
War (in both the Confederate and Union Armies), the First World War, and the Second World
War.
Prior to 1851, more than 35% of the Supreme Court appointees possessed military experience,
including the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, and the longest serving Chief
Justice, John Marshall. The military experience of the Justices appointed during this time was
derived almost exclusively from service in the Continental Army or local or state militias during
the Revolutionary War.103 The two Justices appointed during this period who did not serve in the
Revolutionary War fought in the War of 1812.104
Only 2 of the 18 Justices (14.3%) appointed between 1851 and 1880 possessed military
experience, as opposed to 9 of the 31 Justices (35.5%) appointed prior to 1851. Both of these
Justices, John Marshall Harlan I and William B. Woods, served in the Union Army during the
Civil War and were appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes.105
Presidents continued to appoint Justices to the Court who had fought in the Civil War between
1881 and 1952. Between 1881 and 1900, Presidents appointed five Justices who fought in the
Civil War, with two having served in the Confederate Army.106 Later in this period, Presidents
appointed nine World War I veterans.107 In total, 14 (33.3%) of the 42 Justices appointed
possessed military experience.
Since 1953, the percentage of Justices with military experience increased to 50.0%, with 12 of 24
Justices having some form of military experience. Unlike Justices in previous periods, however,
more recently appointed Justices have served during periods of both war and peace. Eight of the
12 Justices with military experience fought in World War II (two in the Army, four in the Army
Air Force,108 and three in the Navy). John Paul Stevens, who served as a lieutenant commander in
the U.S. Navy from 1942 through 1945, is the only current Justice to have served during wartime.
(...continued)
Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications,
p.1; CRS Report RL32170, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2008, Summary.
103 Additionally, one Justice, William Paterson (appointed by George Washington in 1793), served as a minuteman.
104 Justices James M. Wayne and John Catron, both appointed by Justice Andrew Jackson, were the only Justices in this
period with military experience to have served in a war other than the Revolutionary War.
105 John Marshall Harlan I and William B. Woods were appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 and 1880,
respectively.
106 The first, Lucius C.Q. Lamar, had served as a colonel in the Confederate Army and was appointed to the Court by
President Grover Cleveland in 1888. The second, Edward Douglass White, who served as a lieutenant, was appointed
by Cleveland in 1894. White was later elevated to the position of Chief Justice in 1910 by President William Howard
Taft.
107 One of these veterans, Frank Murphy, appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940, also participated in army
training as a lieutenant during a Court recess in 1942 during the Second World War. For more information, see Sidney
Fine, “Frank Murphy,” in The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789-1993, ed. Clare Cushman
(Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1993), pp. 396-400.
108 The Army Air Force was the immediate precursor to the modern Air Force. The Army Air Force came into being in
1941, assuming control over the Army Air Corps, which had been in existence since 1926, and the Air Force Combat
Command. At this time, the Army Air Force was still a combatant arm of the U.S. Army. See Air Force Historical
Research Agency, “Fact Sheet: The Birth of the United States Air Force,” http://www.afhra.af.mil/factsheets/
factsheet.asp?id=10944/.
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Current Justices Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, and Anthony Kennedy are the only Justices to
have had peacetime military experience.109 Justices Breyer and Alito have both served in the
Army Reserve: Alito as a captain, and Breyer as a corporal. Justice Kennedy served in the
National Guard as a private first class.
Figure 7. Military Service of Supreme Court Justices
By Appointment Date and Type of Experience, 1789-2010
60%
50%
12.5%
40%
s
e
ic
st
12.5%
30%
12.9%
7.14%
Ju
of
%
8.3%
20%
4.2%
26.2%
22.6%
10%
14.3%
12.5%
0%
1789-1850
1851-1880
1881-1952
1953-2010
Years
Army
National Guard/Militia
Confederate Army
Reserve
Army Air Force
Navy
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov) and Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court
Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
Notes: Categories of service have been simplified for the purposes of display. For example, the category
“Army” includes service in the Continental Army (which is a distinct body of the Army that formed after the
Revolutionary War) and the Union Army. In particular, between 1881 and 1952, three of the nine Justices who
are categorized as serving in the Army had served in the Union Army during the Civil War.
109 Justice Alito joined the Army Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (ROTC) while a student at Princeton University in
the late 1960s. While commissioned as a Second Lieutenant after graduation in 1972, Alito deferred until his
graduation from law school in 1975. While Alito’s military service technically overlapped with the Vietnam War for
several months, he did not begin military service until two years after the termination of the conflict. For an account of
Alito’s decision to join the military, see “Alito Joined ROTC While at Princeton,” The Washington Post, November 3,
2005, Final Edition, p. A4.
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Educational Background
To date, every Supreme Court Justice has been a lawyer. There is, however, no constitutional
requirement regarding the educational background of a Justice or the necessity of a law degree.
The legal education of many, though not all, Supreme Court Justices reflects the best training
available at the time, whether that meant “reading the law” with a prominent attorney or attending
an elite law school.
Type of Legal Training
For the first 75 years of the nation, modern legal education as conducted by standard programs
administered by law schools did not exist.110 Some of the most privileged Justices traveled to
England for their legal education to study at one of the four Inns of Court, which, from the 14th
century to the middle of the 19th century, provided legal training to laypersons and admitted them
to the bar. 111 Two of the first five Justices, John Blair and John Rutledge, chose this path and
received the bulk of their legal education at the Inn of the Middle Temple in London.
Most Justices, however, trained through an apprenticeship, during which they “read the law.” In
this apprenticeship, an aspiring attorney would be trained by a practicing attorney. Some lawyers
were self-taught. With no standards regarding the qualifications required of a mentor/practicing
attorney to take an apprentice and the absence of a common curriculum among mentors, this era
has been “dismissively [portrayed] as consisting of shoddy and unscientific training performed
haphazardly, either in the law offices of failed attorneys needing to pay the bills or of their
successful but overworked counterparts eager to turn their prestige into quick cash.”112
Of the 111 Justices, 62 (55.9%) were educated in whole or in part through reading law. As Figure
8 indicates, the vast majority of Justices appointed between 1789 and 1850 “read the law.” During
this period, some Justices, such as Chief Justices John Rutledge and John Marshall, both read the
law and attended law school.113 Of the 31 Justices appointed during this time, 27 (87.1%) read the
law as their sole means of legal education, 3 (9.7%) attended some law school and read the law,
and 1 (3.2%) attended law school.
110 William D. Bader and Roy M. Mersky, The First One Hundred and Eight Justices (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein &
Co., 2004), p. 10.
111 During the 17th and 18th century, many colonists came to study at the inns, and this practice continued until the War
of 1812. Today, these four Inns of Court have “the exclusive right to Call men and women to the Bar, i.e. to admit
those who have fulfilled the necessary qualifications to the degree of Barrister-at-Law, which entitles them, after a
period of pupilage (vocational training) either to practice as independent advocates in the Courts of England and Wales
or to take employment in government or local government service, industry, commerce or finance.” See The
Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, Middle Temple, “The Inn,” http://www.middletemple.org.uk/.
112 Andrew M. Siegel, “‘To Learn and Make Respectable Hereafter:’ The Litchfield Law School in Cultural Context,”
New York University Law Review, vol. 73, no. 6 (Dec. 1998), p. 1979.
113 Justice John Rutledge attended the Inns of Middle Temple; Justice John Marshall attended William and Mary.
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Figure 8. Legal Education of Supreme Court Justices Over Time
By Appointment Date and Type of Education, 1789-2010
100%
90%
80%
70%
s
60%
e
ic
st
50%
Ju
% of
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1789-1850
1851-1880
1881-1952
1953-2010
Years
Read Law
Read Law and Law School
Law School
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov) and Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court
Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
While not the first law school in the United States, the reopening of Harvard Law School in 1829
is generally viewed as the beginning of the modern era in legal education.114 The movement
toward standardized legal education is reflected in the education of Justices appointed between
1851 and 1880. Of the 14 Justices appointed in this period, 64.3% (nine Justices) read the law as
their sole method of legal education, as compared with 87.1% (27 of 31 appointed) prior to 1851.
Between 1851 and 1880, 28.6% (four Justices) of those appointed both attended law school and
read the law, and 7.1% (one Justice) attended law school as their sole means of legal education.
As indicated in Figure 8, between 1881 and 1952, many more Justices attended law school than
in the previous two periods. Importantly, the number of Justices who read law as their sole means
of legal education or read law in addition to attending law school dropped precipitously. Of the 42
114 Siegel, “To Learn and Make Respectable Hereafter,” p. 1978. While first founded in 1817, Harvard failed to allocate
sufficient resources to its law school and struggled with declining enrollment and the long absences of the school’s one
professor. By 1827, the struggling law school had just one teacher and one student. Legal education at Harvard was
reinvigorated by alumnus Nathan Dane, who recruited Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story to serve as the first Dane
Professor at Harvard. See also Harvard Law School, “About HLS: Our History,” Harvard Law School Website,
http://www.law.harvard.edu/about/history.html.
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Justices appointed during this period, 22 (51.1%) attended law school and did not read law, 8
(19.0%) read law but did not attend law school, and 12 (27.9%) received both types of training.
The last Justice to be appointed without having attended law school was Justice James Byrnes,
appointed in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Byrnes, who was a U.S. Senator at the
time of appointment, had read law between 1896 and 1903; he was self-taught.115
All 24 Justices appointed since 1953 were trained at law schools and, unlike many Justices in
previous periods, obtained a formal law degree. By this time, the structure of modern legal
education was firmly in place and members of the bar, including Supreme Court Justices, were no
longer trained through apprenticeship.
Law School Education
Justices since 1909, as Figure 9 shows, have increasingly received their legal training at Harvard,
Yale, or Columbia. Of the 50 Justices appointed in the past 100 years, 46 (92.0%) received part, if
not all, of their legal education at a law school. Of these 46 Justices, 22 (47.8%) were trained at
Harvard, Columbia, or Yale.
Since 1988, Justices from these three schools have consistently composed over 50% of the
Court’s membership. Each of the nine Justices appointed since the elevation of William Rehnquist
to Chief Justice in 1986 has received his or her legal training at Harvard, Yale, or Columbia.116
The only sitting Justice who did not graduate from Harvard, Yale, or Columbia is John Paul
Stevens, who received his law degree from Northwestern University in 1947.
The appointment of Justice Sonia Sotomayor has produced little change in the composition of the
Court with respect to legal education. Like Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, Judge
Sotomayor attended Yale University and replaced David H. Souter, a Harvard alumnus. As a
result, the number of Harvard-educated Justices on the Court has been reduced from five to four
in the current Court, and the number of Yale-educated Justices has increased from two to three.
115 Notably, Justice Robert H. Jackson, appointed seven days after Justice Byrnes, attended Albany Law School from
1911 through 1912, but he left law school and passed the bar before receiving a degree. Justice Jackson, unlike Justice
Byrnes, both “read law” and attended law school before passing the bar exam.
116 Though Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (appointed by President Clinton in 1993) received the bulk of her legal
education at Harvard, she graduated from Columbia.
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Figure 9. Law Schools Attended by Supreme Court Justices
Percentage of Sitting Justices Who Attended Law School, 1909-2010
Source: CRS analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Federal Judicial Biographical Database
(www.fjc.gov) and Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, Supreme Court
Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
Notes: The figure displays the percentage of sitting Justices attending Harvard, Yale, or Columbia, All other law
schools are represented in the “Other” category. For example, during the third natural court of the Chief
Justiceship of Charles Evans Hughes in 1935, Justice Pierce Butler was the only Justice to have not attended a law
school. Of the eight Justices who attended law school, three attended Columbia and one each attended Harvard,
Virginia, Michigan, Cincinnati, and the University of Pennsylvania. The three attending Columbia (33.3% of sitting
Justices) are represented by band at the top of the graph, labeled “Columbia.” The one Justice who attended
Harvard (11.1% of sitting Justices) is represented by the narrower band, labeled “Harvard.” The law school
affiliations of the remaining four Justices (44.4% of sitting Justices) is represented by the large band at the bottom
of the graph, labeled “Other.”
Conclusion
Since President Obama announced the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor in May 2009, Senators,
media commentators, and scholars have engaged in renewed discussion regarding the social,
professional, and educational diversity of the Court’s membership. Discussion about the
importance and appropriate role of a nominee’s background is not new. It has been debated
widely since the Carter Administration’s efforts to diversify the federal judiciary in the late 1970s.
Such discussions will likely continue with each future Supreme Court nomination.
Over time, the membership of the Supreme Court has become more diverse in some ways and
more homogeneous in others. When the Court was first constituted and throughout most of its
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history, neither women nor minorities served on the Court. This changed with the appointment of
the first African-American Justice, Thurgood Marshall, in 1967, and continued with the
appointment of Justice Marshall’s replacement, Clarence Thomas, in 1991. The historical makeup
of the Court changed yet again with the selection of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981. She
was subsequently joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993. The appointment of Sonia Sotomayor
has added additional diversity to the Court’s membership. Confirmed on August 6, 2009,
Sotomayor is the third woman and the first Latina to be appointed to the Court.
The religious affiliations of the Justices have changed over time, as well. For the first 50 years of
the Court, all Justices were affiliated with protestant Christian churches. The first Catholic
Justice, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, was appointed in 1836. After his appointment,
increasing numbers of Roman Catholic Justices have been appointed. Six (66.7%) of the eight
Justices on the current Court identify as Roman Catholic, including recently appointed Justice
Sonia Sotomayor. The first Jewish Justice, Louis Brandeis, was appointed in 1916. For the next
50 years, at least one Jewish Justice served on the Court until the resignation of Abe Fortas in
1969. Currently, two Jewish Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, serve on the
Court.
While the Court has become more diverse with respect to race and gender, the career experiences
of Justices have become more homogeneous over time. Historically, Justices served in a variety
of professions in the public and private sector prior to their elevation. Some have been members
of presidential Cabinets, others were governors, members of federal or state legislative bodies, or
engaged in private legal practice. During the last 50 years, however, Justices have more and more
frequently been elevated from positions on the federal circuit courts of appeals. Of the currently
serving Justices, all possess federal circuit court experience. Only one served on a trial court at
the state or federal level. Six of the nine current Justices were government attorneys in some
capacity. No sitting Justice has served as a federal or state executive or legislator. Notably, only
five have prior experience in private practice, as compared with 98.0% (100) of the other 102
Justices elevated to the bench throughout the history of the Court.
The legal educations of the Justices have become more homogeneous, as well. Before the
standardization of modern legal education, many Justices pursued their legal education through
“reading the law” as an apprentice to a mentoring attorney and supplemented their education
through formal legal training at the nation’s burgeoning law schools. As legal education became
increasingly standardized, an ever-growing number of Justices earned law degrees. Throughout
the history of the Court, and especially in the last 20 years, three Ivy League law schools—
Harvard, Yale, and Columbia—have been disproportionately represented on the Court. Of the
nine sitting Justices, eight attended one of these three schools.
Movement toward greater racial, ethnic, and gender diversity on the Court, as well as patterns of
career and education homogenization, reflect both changes in American society and changes in
the Senate confirmation process over time. The participation of women and minorities in civic
life has led, since the late 1960s, to greater representation of these groups in the federal judiciary,
generally, and the Supreme Court, specifically. For example, Jimmy Carter sought to increase the
numbers of women and minorities in the federal courts throughout his presidency, and Ronald
Reagan explicitly sought a woman to fill the first Supreme Court vacancy of his Presidency.
Importantly, since the 1950s, the Court has increasingly considered cases with widespread, highly
publicized, and controversial social consequences. The Court’s often contentious decisions
involving issues such as racial segregation, defendants’ rights, and personal privacy led to greater
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scrutiny of Supreme Court nominees by interest groups, media commentators, and the U.S.
Senate. Whereas earlier nominees were often confirmed with little Senate scrutiny, extended
Senate confirmation hearings have become a routine component of the modern Supreme Court
appointment process. Presidents, as a result, have reportedly selected nominees with federal
appellate court experience and sterling educational credentials to better predict the nominee’s
judicial philosophy and insulate the nominee from questions of competency in an increasingly
rigorous Senate confirmation process.
Author Contact Information
Susan Navarro Smelcer
Analyst on the Federal Judiciary
ssmelcer@crs.loc.gov, 7-8958
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