Gender
Of the 112 justices, 108 (96.4%) have been men. All Supreme Court justices were males until 1981, when Ronald Reagan fulfilled his 1980 campaign promise to place a woman on the Court, which he did with the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor. O'Connor was later joined on the Court by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993. After O'Connor retired in 2006, Ginsburg would be joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who were successfully appointed to the Court in 2009 and 2010, respectively, by Barack Obama. The only other woman to be nominated to the Court was Harriet Miers, whose nomination to succeed O'Connor by George W. Bush was withdrawn under fire.
Substantial public sentiment in support of appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court has been expressed since at least as early as 1930, when an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor encouraged Herbert Hoover to consider Ohio justice Florence E. Allen or assistant attorney general Mabel Walker Willebrandt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt later appointed Allen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit—making her "one of the highest ranking female jurists in the world at that time". However, neither Roosevelt nor his successors over the following two decades gave strong consideration to female candidates for the Court. Harry Truman considered such an appointment, but was dissuaded by concerns raised by justices then serving that a woman on the Court "would inhibit their conference deliberations", which were marked by informality.
President Richard Nixon named Mildred Lillie, then serving on an Second District Court of Appeal of California, as a potential nominee to fill one of two vacancies on the Court in 1971. However, Lillie was quickly deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association, and no formal proceedings were ever set with respect to her potential nomination. Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist were then successfully nominated to fill those vacancies.
| Name | State | Birth | Death | Year appointed |
Left office |
Appointed by | Reason for termination |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| O'Connor, Sandra DaySandra Day O'Connor | AZ | 1930 | living | 1981 | 2006 | Reagan | retirement |
| Ginsburg, Ruth BaderRuth Bader Ginsburg | NY | 1933 | living | 1993 | incumbent | Clinton | — |
| Sotomayor, SoniaSonia Sotomayor | NY | 1954 | living | 2009 | incumbent | Obama | — |
| Kagan, ElenaElena Kagan | NY | 1960 | living | 2010 | incumbent | Obama | — |
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the word gender:
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)