Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court has a majority from the Northeastern United States, with five justices from states to the north and east of New York. Until the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana in 2020, most recent Justices had been from the Midwest. The most recent justice who retired in 2010 had been JohnPaul Stevens who worked in Maryland while living in Washington D. C.

About Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States in brief

For its first 180 years, justices were almost always white male Protestants of Anglo or Northwestern European descent. The 20th century saw the first appointment of justices who were Jewish, African-American, female, and Italian-American. The first appointments of a Hispanic justice was in the 21st century with Sonia Sotomayor in 2009. In spite of the interest in the Court’s demographics, the gender, race, educational background or religious views of the justices has played little documented role in their jurisprudence, writes David Frum. The issue of regional diversity was again raised with the 2010 retirement of John Paul Stevens, who had been appointed from the midwestern Seventh Circuit. Many Justices may be associated with multiple states or districts other than their hometown or home state. For example, Chief Justice John Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York, but moved to Washington, D.C. at the age of five, where he worked in Coney Barrett’s law school. The most recent justice who retired in 2010 had been JohnPaul Stevens who worked in Maryland while living in Washington D. C. Thus, while serving in Maryland, John C. Roberts worked in Washington, C. D. D., where he grew up. He was also living in Illinois at the time of his retirement in 2010, and worked in Baltimore while serving as a judge in Maryland. The Supreme Court has a majority from the Northeastern United States, with five justices from states to the north and east of New York. The remaining four justices come from California, Georgia, Colorado, and Indiana; until the appointment of Amy Coneyarrett of Indiana in 2020, most recent Justices had been from the Midwest.

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. For most of the existence of the Court, geographic diversity was a key concern of presidents in choosing justices to appoint. George Washington was careful to make appointments with no two justices serving at the same time hailing from the same state. Abraham Lincoln broke with this tradition during the Civil War, and by the late 1880s presidents disregarded it with increasing frequency. Until 1867, the sixth seat was reserved as the “southern seat” Until Cardozo’s appointment in 1932, the third seat were reserved for New Englanders. Until the retirement of Hugo Black in 1971, there was always a southerner on the bench. The importance of regionalism declined, but it still arose from time to time, says Frum, including in the 1970s, when Nixon unsuccessfully nominated Southerners Clement Haynsworth of South Carolina, G. Harrold Carswell of Florida and Herschel Friday of Arkansas, before finally succeeding with the nomination of Harry Blackmun of Minnesota. In the 1990s, the Supreme Court had a majority of justices born in New York and New Jersey.

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