Jewish Justices of the US Supreme Court

Eight Jews have sat on the Supreme Court of the United States, from Louis Brandeis in 1916 to Elena Kagan today. Between them they wrote the right to privacy into American law, won a lawyer for every criminal defendant, held that students keep their constitutional rights at school, and built the case law of gender equality. For decades the seat passed from one Jewish justice to the next and was known, half openly, as "the Jewish seat".

Benjamin CardozoUS Supreme Court Justice and influential common-law jurist; author of 'The Nature of the Judicial Process' · 1870

Felix FrankfurterUS Supreme Court Justice and constitutional scholar; leading advocate of judicial restraint · 1882

Louis BrandeisUS Supreme Court Justice; co-author of the seminal 'The Right to Privacy' and pioneer of the fact-based 'Brandeis brief' · 1856

Ruth Bader GinsburgUS Supreme Court Justice and champion of gender equality. · 1933 Abe FortasSupreme Court justice; as a lawyer he argued Gideon v. Wainwright, which gave every criminal defendant the right to counsel · 1965 Arthur GoldbergUS Secretary of Labor, Supreme Court justice and ambassador to the United Nations; drafted UN Security Council Resolution 242 · 1962 Elena KaganSupreme Court justice since 2010; first woman to serve as Dean of Harvard Law School and as Solicitor General of the United States · 2010 Stephen BreyerSupreme Court justice 1994-2022; a pragmatist who argued that the Constitution must be read for the workable consequences of a rule · 1994