Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States

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The demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States encompass the gender, ethnicity, and religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the 116 people who have been appointed and confirmed as justices to the Supreme Court. Some of these characteristics have been raised as an issue since the court was established in 1789. For its first 180 years, justices were almost always white male Protestants of Anglo or Northwestern European descent.^[1]

Prior to the 20th century, a few Catholics were appointed, but concerns about diversity on the court were mainly in terms of geographic diversity, to represent all geographic regions of the country, as opposed to ethnic, religious, or gender diversity.^[2] The 20th century saw the first appointment of justices who were Jewish (Louis Brandeis, 1916), African-American (Thurgood Marshall, 1967), female (Sandra Day O'Connor, 1981), and Italian-American (Antonin Scalia, 1986). The first appointment of a Hispanic justice was in the 21st century with Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, with the possible exception of Justice Benjamin Cardozo, a Sephardi Jew of Portuguese descent, who was appointed in 1932.

In spite of the interest in the court's demographics and the symbolism accompanying the inevitably political appointment process,^[3] and the views of some commentators that no demographic considerations should arise in the selection process,^[4][5] the gender, race, educational background or religious views of the justices has played little documented role in their jurisprudence. For example, the opinions of the first two African-American justices reflected radically different judicial philosophies; William Brennan and Antonin Scalia shared Catholic faith and a Harvard Law School education, but shared little in the way of jurisprudential philosophies. The court's first two female justices voted together no more often than with their male colleagues, and historian Thomas R. Marshall writes that no particular "female perspective" can be discerned from their opinions.^[6]