Those unfamiliar with the
history of women on the Supreme Court may find it hard to believe that the first female justice was
nominated by a Republican president -- none other than Ronald Reagan. Yet it would take two Democratic presidents decades later to add more women to the mix and bring the nation's highest court up to a judicial body fully one-third female.
Compared to the earnest intellectuals that followed her, Sandra Day O'Connell enjoyed a rough-and-tumble childhood more suited to the life of a rancher than a Supreme Court Justice. She grew up in a remote area of Arizona without electricity or running water, and learned to ride, rope and shoot like a cowboy. However, those skills served her well when it came down to the selection process. Her love of horses clinched the deal with President Ronald Reagan who nominated O'Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court.More »
To look at her slight figure draped in a black robe with a dainty lace collar, you'd never know Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a tenacious trailblazer and a superwoman of her generation. Talk about juggling family and career. While attending law school, she also cared for her preschool daughter and her husband, a law school school student battling cancer. To make sure he didn't fall behind due to illness, she went so far as to attend classes for him, take notes, and type up papers he dictated to her. Despite being turned down for a clerkship with a Supreme Court Justice who wouldn't even interview her because she was a woman, Bader went on to join the law school faculty at Rutgers and Columbia and serve as General Counsel of the ACLU.More »
Those who questioned President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as Supreme Court Justice and regarded it as an attempt to pander to the Hispanic vote missed one key fact: she brought more federal judicial experience than any Supreme Court justice in the past century. Yet she was labeled a 'racist' by right-wing conservatives who took a comment she'd once made about being a 'wise Latina' out of context, and was even criticized for her membership in an all-female club. She survived these attacks as well as media coverage that often bordered on racist and sexist (while ignoring her legal credentials) and was confirmed on August 6, 2009.More »
Although being Female Supreme Court Justice #4 might not seem like a significant footnote in history, when Elena Kagan took her seat on the bench in October 2010, she became the third woman to serve concurrently on the Court, making the nine-member Court one-third female. Along with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, she shifted it one step closer to reality by more accurately reflecting the composition of the nation it presided over. Despite the gains in women's rights since the first female justice was named, Kagan's own path to the high court was every bit as challenging as that of her predecessors. Like them she broke new ground, accomplishing many firsts prior to her nomination. These include her appointment as the first female dean of Harvard Law School and the first female Solicitor General in the history of the U.S.More »
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