Supreme Court Justice

Supreme Court Justice in the United States

Introduction to Supreme Court Justice

Chronological Listing of Supreme Court Justices

  • Henry Baldwin
  • Elizabeth Brand Monroe
  • Philip Pendleton Barbour
  • Joseph Gordon Hylton
  • Hugo Lafayette Black
  • Michael J. Gerhardt
  • Harry Andrew Blackmun
  • Philippa Strum
  • John Blair Jr.
  • Thad W. Tate
  • Samuel M. Blatchford
  • Timothy S. Huebner
  • Joseph Bradley
  • Jonathan Lurie
  • Louis Dembitz Brandeis
  • Philippa Strum
  • William Joseph Brennan Jr.
  • Stephen J. Wermiel
  • David Josiah Brewer
  • Kermit L. Hall
  • Stephen Gerald Breyer
  • Ken I. Kersch
  • Henry Billings Brown
  • Thomas C. Mackey
  • Warren Earl Burger
  • Herman Schwartz
  • Harold Hitz Burton
  • Eric W. Rise
  • Pierce Butler
  • David J. Danelski
  • James Francis Byrnes
  • Victoria Saker Woeste
  • John Archibald Campbell
  • Joseph Gordon Hylton
  • Benjamin Nathan Cardozo
  • Richard Polenberg
  • John Catron
  • A.E. Keir Nash
  • Salmon Portland Chase
  • David J. Bodenhamer
  • Samuel Chase
  • Donald O. Dewey
  • Tom Campbell Clark
  • Michael R. Belknap
  • John Hessin Clarke
  • Barry Cushman
  • Nathan Clifford
  • William Bosch
  • Benjamin Robbins Curtis
  • Margaret M Russell
  • William Cushing
  • Donald O. Dewey
  • Peter Vivian Daniel
  • Philip J. Schwarz
  • David Davis
  • Michael Allan Wolf
  • William Rufus Day
  • Richard F. Hamm
  • William Orville Douglas
  • Dorothy J. Glancy
  • Gabriel Duvall
  • John Paul Jones
  • Oliver Ellsworth
  • William R. Casto
  • Stephen Johnson Field
  • Margaret M. Russell
  • Abe Fortas
  • Jonathan Kahn
  • Felix Frankfurter
  • Michael E. Parrish
  • Melville Weston Fuller
  • James W. Ely Jr.
  • Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg
  • Kenneth Jost
  • Arthur Joseph Goldberg
  • Susan N. Herman
  • Horace Gray
  • A.E. Keir Nash
  • Robert Cooper Grier
  • Margaret M. Russell
  • John Marshall Harlan
  • Linda C.A. Przybyszewski
  • John Marshall Harlan II
  • Norman Dorsen
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
  • G. Edward White
  • Charles Evans Hughes
  • Richard M. Abrams
  • Ward Hunt
  • Scott Horton
  • James Iredell
  • Natalie Wexler
  • Howell Edmunds Jackson
  • Robert Stanley
  • Robert Houghwout Jackson
  • Daniel A. Farber
  • John Jay
  • Sandra F. VanBurkleo
  • Thomas Johnson
  • Maeva Marcus
  • William Johnson
  • Sandra F. VanBurkleo
  • Anthony McLeod Kennedy
  • John Paul Jones
  • Joseph Rucker Lamar
  • Paul Kens
  • Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar
  • Thomas C. Mackey
  • Henry Brockholst Livingston
  • Timothy S. Huebner
  • Horace Harmon Lurton
  • Paul Kens
  • John Marshall
  • Herbert A. Johnson
  • Thurgood Marshall
  • Mark Tushnet
  • Stanley Matthews
  • Robert Stanley
  • Joseph McKenna
  • Richard F. Hamm
  • John McKinley
  • Elizabeth Brand Monroe
  • John McLean
  • Paul Finkelman
  • James Clark McReynolds
  • Michael Allan Wolf
  • Samuel Freeman Miller
  • Lou Falkner Williams
  • Sherman Minton
  • Eric W. Rise
  • William Moody
  • Richard F. Hamm
  • Alfred Moore
  • Michael Grossberg
  • Francis (Frank) William Murphy
  • Peter Irons
  • Samuel Nelson
  • Jenni Parrish
  • Sandra Day O’Connor
  • Marci A. Hamilton
  • William Paterson
  • Donald O. Dewey
  • Rufus Wheeler Peckham Jr.
  • Scott Horton
  • Mahlon Pitney
  • Barry Cushman
  • Lewis Franklin Powell Jr.
  • Henry J. Abraham
  • Stanley Forman Reed
  • Daniel L. Breen
  • William Hubbs Rehnquist
  • Craig M Bradley
  • John G. Roberts Jr.
  • Tony Mauro
  • Owen Josephus Roberts
  • Kermit L. Hall
  • John Rutledge
  • Natalie Wexler
  • Wiley Blount Rutledge
  • John Ferren
  • Edward Terry Sanford
  • Barry Cushman
  • Antonin Scalia
  • Ralph A Rossum
  • George Shiras Jr.
  • Stephen Cresswell
  • David Hackett Souter
  • Stephen J. Wermiel
  • John Paul Stevens
  • Ward Farnsworth
  • Potter Stewart
  • Gayle Binion
  • Harlan Fiske Stone
  • John W. Johnson
  • Joseph Story
  • H. Jefferson Powell
  • William Strong
  • Lou Falkner Williams
  • George Sutherland
  • Michael Allan Wolf
  • Noah Haynes Swayne
  • William Bosch
  • William Howard Taft
  • Robert C. Post
  • Robert Brooke Taney
  • Paul Finkelman
  • Clarence Thomas
  • Mark A. Graber
  • Smith Thompson
  • Michael Grossberg
  • Thomas Todd
  • Sandra F. VanBurkleo
  • Robert Trimble
  • Michael Grossberg
  • Willis Van Devanter
  • Rebecca Shepherd Shoemaker
  • Frederick Moore Vinson
  • James A. Thomson
  • Morrison Remick Waite
  • Robert M. Goldman
  • Earl Warren
  • Daniel B. Rodriguez
  • Bushrod Washington
  • Thad W. Tate
  • James Moore Wayne
  • Margaret M. Russell
  • Byron Raymond White
  • William E. Nelson
  • Edward Douglass White
  • Judith A. Baer
  • Charles Evans Whittaker
  • Victoria Saker Woeste
  • James Wilson
  • Maeva Marcus
  • Levi Woodbury
  • Paul Finkelman
  • William Burnham Woods
  • Stephen Cresswell

Example: Sandra Day Oconnor Supreme Court Justice

Initially a strong conservative, Sandra Day O’Connor became in the late 1980s more of a centrist on a Court sharply divided between conservatives and liberals. Having staked out a pivotal position at the center of the Court, she held or helped define the balance of power on many important issues, including affirmative action, the death penalty, abortion rights, and the separation of church and state.

O’Connor established a reputation of voting on a case-by-case basis rather than committing herself to consistent overarching principles. She wrote majority opinions as narrowly as possible, focusing on the unique circumstances of each case and the practical effects of each decision. O’Connor may have best summarized her approach in a dissenting opinion from a 1995 decision in Vernonia School District v. Acton, in which she wrote, “The only way for judges to mediate these conflicting impulses is to do what they should do anyway: stay close to the record in each case that appears before them, and make their judgments based on that alone.”

This approach freed her to make future decisions based on the merits of each case, which made her vote largely unpredictable. An often repeated phrase, “the O’Connor Court,” reflected her powerful position as a critical swing vote on controversial issues that divided the Court. From 1994 to 2005, she sided with the majority in more 5-to-4 decisions than any other justice. In one of her best-known deciding votes, she sided with the majority in the 5-to-4 decision in Bush v. Gore, which effectively called the 2000 presidential election for George W. Bush. See also Disputed Presidential Election of 2000.

O’Connor’s pragmatic, case-by-case approach was perhaps most evident on the issue of abortion. In 1983 she proposed her own test for evaluating restrictions on abortion, asking whether the restriction “unduly burdened” the right to choose. O’Connor used this test throughout her tenure to decide whether she considered a particular abortion restriction permissible. From 1983 to 1992, O’Connor upheld every abortion restriction put before the Court. But in a 1989 case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, O’Connor refused to provide the swing vote to overturn Roe itself. Three years later in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, she joined liberal justices in upholding the “core holding” of Roe-namely, that states may not place serious restrictions on abortion prior to a fetus’s “point of viability.” However, this ruling abandoned the trimester framework that had been established in Roe, which had set a fetus’s viability at six months.

O’Connor demonstrated consistency in several areas. Most notably, she was a staunch proponent of the so-called federalism revolution led by Chief Justice Rehnquist, joining the majority in a series of cases that strengthened the sovereignty of the states while limiting the role of Congress. She also showed sensitivity to issues of sex discrimination throughout her tenure. On several occasions she joined the Court’s four liberal justices to uphold a broad interpretation of a federal statute addressing sex discrimination.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

Guide to Supreme Court Justice

About Voting

Voting Rights, Voter Participation, Election Redistricting, Electoral College (including Electoral College Selection, Counting the Votes, Electoral College Origins, Electoral College First Years, Electoral College History and the 12th Amendment, Disputed Elections of 1824 and 1876, Electoral College and the Influence of Political Parties, Winner-Take-All System, Debate Over the Electoral College and Electoral College Reform), Electorate Age and Electorate Constitutional Provisions.


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