Little Known Facts About the U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court www.supremecourtus.gov has been center stage since Justice Roberts was confirmed and with the nomination this week of Judge Alito, so I decided to take a look at some facts about the Supreme Court that a lot of people don't know. Hope you find them interesting.
Facts about the present sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justices (Roberts, O'Connor, Ginsberg, Scalia, Breyer, Kennedy, Stevens, Thomas and Souter):
6 of the justices attended Harvard Law School (Breyer, Ginsberg - although she graduated from Columbia Law, Kennedy, Scalia, Souter and Roberts. As to the other 3 - Thomas went to Yale, O'Connor went to Stanford and Stevens went to Northwestern.
Stevens is the only justice who has been divorced.
3 of the justices clerked for previous Supreme Court justices - Breyer clerked for Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, Stevens clerked for Justice Wiley Rutledge and Roberts clerked for Justice Rehnquist.
Souter is the only justice who has never been married and has no children.
Scalia has 9 children; Stevens has 4; Breyer, Kennedy and O'Connor each have 3; Ginsberg and Roberts each have 2; and, Thomas has 1.
If Alito is confirmed, for the first time in the history of the Court, a majority of the justices will be catholic (Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas); 2 justices are jewish (Ginsberg and Breyer); 2 justices are episcopalian (Souter and O'Connor); and one justice is protestant (Stevens). www.adherents.com.
Here are some other interesting Supreme Court facts I found on MSNBC's Supreme Court Fact Finder:
The youngest justice ever was Joseph Story, who was 32 when he joined the Court in 1811. Story served for 33 years.
The oldest justice was Olivier Wendell Holmes, who was 90 when he retired in 1932 (Justice Stevens is 5 years away from tying this record).
The longest serving justice was William O. Douglas, who served on the Court for 36 years, from 1939 until 1975.
Jimmie Carter is the only President who served a single full four-year term and never had the opportunity to appoint a justice.
Since 1789, 30 of the 145 nominees sent to the Senate for confirmation have been rejected.
President George Washington appointed the most justices at 11, with President Franklin Roosevelt a close second at 9.