Justice Political Affiliation Most Known For

Scalia- Reagon 1986 intellectual anchor of the Court's conservative wing

In his quarter-century on the Court, Scalia has staked out a conservative ideology in his opinions, advocating textualism (holding that a statute's ordinary meaning should govern its interpretation, as opposed to inquiries into non-textual sources such as the intention of the legislature) in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation. He is a strong defender of the powers of the executive branch, believing presidential power should be paramount in many areas. He opposes affirmative action and other policies that treat minorities as groups. He files separate opinions in large numbers of cases, and, in his minority opinions, often castigates the Court's majority in scathing language. Scalia does not compromise his views in order to attract five votes for a majority (unlike the late Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. who would accept less than he wanted in order to gain a partial victory) Scalia enjoys a warm relationship with fellow Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal, with the two attending the opera together. was a colleague of Scalia's on the D.C. Circuit, and the Scalias and Ginsburgs have dinner together every New Year's Eve.[41]

Kennedy- Reagon 1988 Since the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, Kennedy has often been the swing vote on many of the Court's politically charged 54 decisions. Conservatives have felt betrayed by some of his decisions Appointed by a Republican president, Kennedys tenure on the Court has seen him take a somewhat mixed ideological path; he looks at cases individually rather than adhering to any rigid ideology. Kennedy has supported adding substance to the "liberty" interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which means he supports a constitutional right to abortion in principle, though he has voted to uphold several restrictions on that right, including laws to prohibit partial-birth abortions. He is "tough on crime" and opposes creating constitutional restrictions on the police, especially in Fourth Amendment cases involving searches for illegal drugs, although there are some exceptions, such as his concurrence in Ferguson v. City of Charleston. He also takes a very broad view of constitutional protection for speech under the First Amendment. *Most often swing vote

Thomas- Bush 1991

VERY CONSERVATIVE- Not sure who is more conservative, Thomas or Scalia. They typically side together on rulings. Thomas has taken a textualist approach, seeking to uphold what he sees as the original meaning of the United States Constitution and statutes. He is generally viewed as among the most conservative members of the Court. Thomas has often approached federalism issues in a way that limits the power of the federal government and expands power of state and local governments. At the same time, Thomas's opinions have generally supported a strong executive branch within the federal government According to the same commentator, Thomas generally declines to engage in what he sees as judicial lawmaking, and instead views the constitutional role of the Court as being the interpretation of law, rather than the making of law. Supports (stare decisis) legal principle by which judges are obliged to respect the precedents established by prior decisions

Judge Political Affiliation

Most Known For

Ginsberg- Clinton 1993 She is generally viewed as belonging to the liberal wing of the Court.
Ginsburg has also been an advocate for using foreign law and norms to shape U.S. law in judicial opinionsin contrast to the textualist views of her colleagues Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito. Despite their fundamental differences, Ginsburg considers Scalia her closest colleague on the Court, and they often dine and attend the opera together Ginsburg spent a considerable portion of her career as an advocate for the equal citizenship status of women and men as a constitutional principle She is the oldest Supreme Court Justice

Breyer- Clinton 1994 known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law, Breyer is generally associated with the more liberal side of the Court
Breyer's pragmatic approach to the law "will tend to make the law more sensible"; according to Cass Sunstein, Breyer's "attack on originalism is powerful and convincing. In 2006, Breyer said that in assessing a law's constitutionality, while some of his colleagues "emphasize language, a more literal reading of the [Constitution's] text, history and tradition," he looks more closely to the "purpose and consequences." He has also defended the Supreme Court's use of foreign law and international law as persuasive (but not binding) authority in its decisions. Breyer has also demonstrated a consistent pattern of deference to Congress. Breyer rejects the strict interpretation of the Sixth Amendment espoused by Justice Scalia that all facts necessary to criminal punishment must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.[25] In many other areas on the Court, too, Breyer's pragmatism is considered the intellectual counterweight to Scalia's textualist philosophy.[26] In describing his interpretive philosophy, Breyer has sometimes noted his use of six interpretive tools: text, history, tradition, precedent, the purpose of a statute, and the consequences of competing interpretations.[27] Breyer notes that only the last two differentiate him from textualists on the Supreme Court such as Scalia. Breyer argues that these sources are necessary, however, and in the former case (purpose), can in fact provide greater objectivity in legal interpretation than looking merely at what is often ambiguous statutory text.[28] With the latter (consequences), Breyer argues that considering the impact of legal interpretations is a further way of ensuring consistency with a law's intended purpose.

Roberts- Bush 2005 Chief Justice Conservative

"appears to be strongly rooted in the discipline of traditional legal method, evincing a fidelity to text, structure, history, and the constitutional hierarchy. He exhibits the restraint that flows from the careful application of established decisional rules and the practice of reasoning from the case law. He appears to place great stock in the processoriented tools and doctrinal rules that guard against the aggregation of judicial power and keep judicial discretion in check: jurisdictional limits, structural federalism, textualism, and the procedural rules that govern the scope of judicial review Although Roberts has often sided with Scalia and Thomas, Roberts provided a crucial vote against their position in Jones v. Flowers. In Jones, Roberts sided with liberal justices of the court in ruling that, before a home is seized and sold in a taxforfeiture sale, due diligence must be demonstrated and proper notification needs to be sent to the owners. Dissenting were Anthony Kennedy along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Samuel Alito did not participate, while Roberts's opinion was joined by David Souter, Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Catholic/ Swears in presidents. He swore in Obama- who actually voted against him getting the position (awkward.)

Judge Political Affiliation Best Known For:

Alito- Bush 2006 eleventh Roman Catholic to serve on the court. Alito has been described by the Cato Institute as a conservative jurist with a libertarian streak Moreover, despite having been at one time nicknamed "Scalito," Alito's views have differed from those of Scalia (and Thomas), as in the Michael Taylor case cited above and various other cases of the 2005 term. Scalia, a fierce critic of reliance on legislative history in statutory interpretation, was the only member of the Court in Zedner v. United States not to join a section of Alito's opinion that discussed the legislative history of the statute in question. In two higherprofile cases, involving the constitutionality of political gerrymandering and campaign finance reform (LULAC v. Perry and Randall v. Sorrell), Alito adopted narrow positions, declining to join the bolder positions advanced by either philosophical side of the Court. According to a scotusblog.com analysis of 2005 term decisions, Alito and Scalia concurred in the result of 86% of decisions (in which both participated), and concurred in full in only 75%.[37]

Sotomayer- Obama 2009 Liberal (she replaces Souter)

Kagan- Obama 2010 Liberal

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."- This has caused a lot of conserversy. She had to clairify that she believed that all people regardless of their race/background should have to follow the law as it is currently written. In succeeding Justice Souter, Sotomayor had done little to change the philosophical balance of the Court, as she was a reliable member of the liberal bloc when the justices divided along the commonly perceived ideological lines. Sotomayor voted with Justices Ginsburg and Breyer 90 percent of the time, one of the highest agreement rates on the Court. Has diabetes- admits she isnt happy- got divorced- wont date attorneys

Kagan is the first justice appointed without any prior experience as a judge since William Rehnquist in 1972.] She is the fourth female justice in the Court's history (and, for the first time, part of a Court with three female justices) and the eighth Jewish justice,[69] making three of the nine current justices Jewish.

Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen praised Kagan's "eloquent voice," which he characterized as unusual for a relative newcomer to the Court, and noted her "ability to puncture her colleagues bloodless abstractions and tendentious arguments, and to explain the constitutional stakes in plain language that all citizens can understand."[72] He said Kagan's writing was giving Justice Antonin Scalia "a run for his money."

Important Past Supreme Court Justices in Order Justice Political Affiliation Best Known For Brennan- Eisenhower 1956 During his term on the Supreme Court, he was known for being a leader of the judicially liberal wing of the Court He was known for his outspoken progressive views, including opposition to the death penalty and support for abortion rights. He authored several landmark case opinions, including Baker v. Carr, establishing the "one person, one vote" principle, and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which required "actual malice" in a libel suit against those deemed "public figures". Due to his ability to shape a wide variety of opinions, and due to his ability to bargain for votes in many cases, he was considered to be among the Court's most influential members. Justice Antonin Scalia has called Brennan "probably the most influential Justice of the [20th] century." With the ascension of the most conservative member of the court, William Rehnquist, to the position of Chief Justice, and the replacement of Warren Burger and the moderate Lewis Powell with conservatives Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, Brennan found himself more frequently isolated. At times his opinions would be joined only by Thurgood Marshall, as by 1975 the two were the last remaining liberal justices of the Warren Court (Byron White was the third survivor of the Warren Court during Rehnquist's tenure, but he often sided with the conservatives, especially on cases involving criminals and abortion). This likemindedness led to both Brennan and Marshall's clerks referring to them as 'Justice Brennan-Marshall' in the face of the court's heavy conservative opposition to the two. Brennan strongly believed in the Bill of Rights, arguing early on in his career that it should be applied to the states in addition to the federal government.[19] He often took positions in favor of individual rights against the state, often favoring criminal defendants, minorities, the poor, and other underrepresented groups. Furthermore, he generally shied away from the absolutist positions of Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, being very amenable to compromise. He was willing to compromise to win a majority of Justices.[20] Brennan's conservative detractors charged that he was a purveyor of judicial activism, accusing him of deciding outcomes before coming up with a legal rationale for them.[21] At his retirement, Brennan said the case he thought was most important was Goldberg v. Kelly, which ruled that a local, state or federal government could not terminate welfare payments to a person without a prior individual evidentiary hearing.[22] Brennan was also less interested in stare decisis or the avoidance of "absolutist" positions where the death penalty was concerned. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled that the death penalty was constitutional four years later. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall took turns, joined by the other, in issuing a dissent in every denial of certiorari in a capital case, and from every decision in a case which the court did take which failed to vacate a sentence of death.[23] Brennan also authored a dissent from the denial of certiorari in Glass v. Louisiana. In Glass, the Court chose not to hear a case that challenged the constitutionality of the use of the electric chair as a form of execution. Brennan wrote:[24] Th[e] evidence suggests that death by electrical current is extremely violent and inflicts pain and indignities far beyond the "mere extinguishment of life." Witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner "cringes," "leaps," and "fights the straps with amazing strength." "The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands." The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and "rest on [his] cheeks." The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. Brennan concluded by stating that electrocution is "nothing less than the contemporary technological equivalent of burning people at the stake."

Justice Political Affiliation Best Known For

Marshall Adams 1801-1835 Federalist was the Chief Justice of the United States (18011835) whose court opinions helped lay the basis for American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court of the United States a coequal branch of government along with the legislative and executive branches The longest-serving Chief Justice of the United States, Marshall dominated the Court for over three decades and played a significant role in the development of the American legal system. Most notably, he reinforced the principle that federal courts are obligated to exercise judicial review, by disregarding purported laws if they violate the Constitution. Thus, Marshall cemented the position of the American judiciary as an independent and influential branch of government. Furthermore, the Marshall Court made several important decisions relating to federalism, affecting the balance of power between the federal government and the states during the early years of the republic. In particular, he repeatedly confirmed the supremacy of federal law over state law, and supported an expansive reading of the enumerated powers. Some of his decisions were unpopular. Nevertheless, Marshall built up the third branch of the federal government, and augmented federal power in the name of the Constitution, and the rule of law.[2] Marshall, along with Daniel Webster (who argued some of the cases), was the leading Federalist of the day, pursuing Federalist Party approaches to build a stronger federal government over the opposition of the Jeffersonian Republicans, who wanted stronger state governments.[3]

Holmes- Roosevelt 1902 Noted for his long service, his concise and pithy opinions, and his deference to the decisions of elected legislatures, he is one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in history, particularly for his "clear and present danger" majority opinion in the 1919 case of Schenck v. United States, and is one of the most influential American common law judges. Holmes retired from the Court at the age of 90, making him the oldest Justice in the Supreme Court's history Holmes helped move American legal thinking away from formalism and towards legal realism, as summed up in his maxim: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."[2] Holmes espoused a form of moral skepticism and opposed the doctrine of natural law, marking a significant shift in American jurisprudence. As he wrote in one of his most famous decisions, his dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919), he regarded the United States Constitution as "an experiment, as all life is an experiment" and believed that as a consequence "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death."[3] he supported efforts for economic regulation and advocated broad freedom of speech under the First Amendment. These positions as well as his distinctive personality and writing style made him a popular figure, especially with American progressives,[4] despite his deep cynicism and disagreement with their politics.[5] His jurisprudence influenced much subsequent American legal thinking, including judicial consensus supporting New Deal regulatory law, pragmatism, critical legal studies, and law and economics.

Cardozo-Hoover 1932 Democratic Democratic Cardozo's appointment by a Republican president has been referred to as one of the few Supreme Court appointments in history not motivated by partisanship or politics, but strictly based on the nominee's contribution to law.[9] However, Hoover was running for reelection, eventually against Franklin Roosevelt, so a larger political calculation may have been operating. Cardozo was a member of the Three Musketeers along with Brandeis and Stone, which was considered to be the liberal faction of the Supreme Court. In his years as an Associate Justice, he handed down opinions that stressed the necessity for the tightest adherence to the tenth amendment.

Justice Political Affiliation Best Known For

Warren Liberal Warren was a more liberal justice than anyone had anticipated.[23] Warren was able to craft a long series of landmark decisions because he built a winning coalition. When Frankfurter retired in 1962 and President John F. Kennedy named labor lawyer Arthur Goldberg to replace him, Warren finally had the fifth liberal vote for his majority. William J. Brennan, Jr., a liberal Democrat appointed by Eisenhower in 1956, was the intellectual leader of the activist faction that included Black and Douglas. Brennan complemented Warren's political skills with the strong legal skills Warren lacked. Warren and Brennan met before the regular conferences to plan out their strategy.

OConner-Reagan 1981 (1st female) Republican Initially, her voting record aligned closely with the conservative Rehnquist (voting with him 87% of the time her first three years at the Court).[23] From that time until 1998 O'Connor's alignment with Rehnquist ranged from 93.4% to 63.2%, hitting above 90% in three of those years.[24] In nine of her first sixteen years on the Court, O'Connor voted with Rehnquist more than with any other justice.[24] Later on, as the Court's make-up became more conservative (i.e., Anthony Kennedy replacing Lewis Powell, and Clarence Thomas replacing Thurgood Marshall), O'Connor often became the swing vote on the Court. However, she usually disappointed the Court's more liberal bloc in contentious 54 decisions: from 1994 to 2004, she joined the traditional conservative bloc of Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Thomas 82 times; she joined the liberal bloc of John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer only 28 times.[25] O'Connor's (relatively small)[26] shift away from conservatives on the Court seems to have been due at least in part to Thomas's views.[27] When Thomas and O'Connor were voting on the same side, she would typically write a separate opinion of her own, refusing to join his.[28] In the 1992 term, O'Connor did not join a single one of Thomas' dissents.[29 Conservative criticismO'Connor's case-by-case approach routinely placed her in the center of the court and drew both criticism and praise. The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, for instance, described her as lacking a judicial philosophy and instead displaying "political positioning embedded in a social agenda".[43] Another conservative commentator, Ramesh Ponnuru, wrote that, although O'Connor "has voted reasonably well", her tendency to issue very case-specific rulings "undermines the predictability of the law and aggrandizes the judicial role