Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

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Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States are the members of the Supreme Court of the United States other than the Chief Justice of the United States. The number of Associate Justices is determined by the United States Congress and is currently set at eight by the Judiciary Act of 1869.

Associate Justices, like the Chief Justice, are nominated by the President of the United States and are confirmed by the United States Senate by majority vote. This is provided for in Article II of the Constitution, which states that the President "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint...Judges of the supreme Court."

Article III of the Constitution specifies that Associate Justices, and all other United States federal judges "shall hold their Offices during good Behavior." This language means that the appointments are effectively for life, ending only when a Justice dies in office, retires, or is removed from office following impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate.^[1]

Each of the Justices of the Supreme Court has a single vote in deciding the cases argued before it; the Chief Justice's vote counts no more than that of any other Justice. However, in drafting opinions, the Chief Justice enjoys additional influence in case disposition if in the majority through his power to assign who writes the opinion. Otherwise, the senior justice in the majority assigns the writing of a decision. Furthermore, the Chief Justice leads the discussion of the case among the justices. The Chief Justice has certain administrative responsibilities that the other Justices do not, and is paid somewhat more ($217,400 compared with $208,100 as of 2009^[update][2]).

Associate Justices have seniority by order of appointment, although the Chief Justice is always considered to be the most senior. If two justices are appointed on the same day, the older is designated the senior Justice of the two. Currently, the senior Associate Justice is John Paul Stevens. By tradition, when the Justices are in conference deliberating the outcome of cases before the Court, the justices state their views in order of seniority. If there is a knock at their conference room door, the junior justice (who sits closest to the door) must answer it.

Under 28 USC 3, when the Chief Justice is unable to discharge his functions, or that office is vacant, his duties are carried out by the most senior Associate Justice until the disability or the vacancy ends.

The current Associate Justices are (in order of seniority): John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, and Sonia Sotomayor.

Contents 1 Retired Associate Justices 2 List of Associate Justices 3 Further reading 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Retired Associate Justices

Contrary to popular belief, a Justice who steps down from the Court continues to be a member of it. When a Justice retires, he or she usually goes into senior status, which means that the Justice keeps his or her title, and may serve by assignment on panels of the Federal District Courts of Appeals (as Lewis F. Powell, Jr., did for several years). Retired Justices may choose to keep a chamber in the Supreme Court building, as well as to employ law clerks. The names of Retired Associate Justices continue to appear alongside the other active members on the Bound Volumes of Supreme Court decisions. However, Retired Associate Justices take no part in the consideration or decision of any cases before the Supreme Court.

Currently, there are two Retired Associate Justices: Sandra Day O'Connor, who assumed senior status on January 31, 2006, and David H. Souter, who assumed senior status on June 29, 2009.

[edit] List of Associate Justices

Number	Nominee	Replacing	Date of Senate Confirmation	President
1	John Rutledge	(new seat)	September 26, 1789	Washington*
2	William Cushing	(new seat)	September 26, 1789
3	James Wilson	(new seat)	September 26, 1789
4	John Blair	(new seat)	September 26, 1789
5	James Iredell	(new seat)	February 10, 1790
6	Thomas Johnson[1]	Rutledge	November 7, 1791
7	William Paterson	Johnson	March 4, 1793
8	Samuel Chase	Blair	January 27, 1796
9	Bushrod Washington	Wilson	December 20, 1798	J. Adams*
10	Alfred Moore	Iredell	December 10, 1799
11	William Johnson	Moore	March 24, 1804	Jefferson
12	Henry Brockholst Livingston	Paterson	December 17, 1806
13	Thomas Todd	(new seat)	March 2, 1807
14	Gabriel Duvall	Chase	November 18, 1811	Madison
15	Joseph Story	Cushing	November 18, 1811
16	Smith Thompson[1]	Livingston	December 9, 1823	Monroe
17	Robert Trimble	Todd	May 9, 1826	J. Q. Adams
18	John McLean	Trimble	March 7, 1829	Jackson*
19	Henry Baldwin	Washington	January 6, 1830
20	James Moore Wayne	Johnson	January 9, 1835
21	Philip Pendleton Barbour	Duvall	March 15, 1836
22	John Catron	(new seat)	March 8, 1837
23	John McKinley	(new seat)	September 25, 1837	Van Buren
24	Peter Vivian Daniel	Barbour	March 2, 1841
25	Samuel Nelson	Thompson	February 14, 1845	Tyler
26	Levi Woodbury[1]	Story	January 31, 1846	Polk
27	Robert Cooper Grier	Baldwin	August 4, 1846
28	Benjamin Robbins Curtis[1]	Woodbury	December 20, 1851	Fillmore
29	John Archibald Campbell	McKinley	March 22, 1853	Pierce
30	Nathan Clifford	Curtis	January 12, 1858	Buchanan
31	Noah Haynes Swayne	McLean	January 24, 1862	Lincoln*
32	Samuel Freeman Miller	Daniel	July 16, 1862
33	David Davis	Campbell	December 8, 1862
34	Stephen Johnson Field	(new seat)	March 10, 1863
35	William Strong	Grier	February 18, 1870	Grant*
36	Joseph Philo Bradley	(new seat)	March 21, 1870
37	Ward Hunt	Nelson	December 11, 1872
38	John Marshall Harlan	Davis	November 29, 1877	Hayes
39	William Burnham Woods	Strong	December 21, 1880
40	Thomas Stanley Matthews	Swayne	May 12, 1881	Garfield
41	Horace Gray	Clifford	December 20, 1881	Arthur
42	Samuel Blatchford	Hunt	March 22, 1882
43	Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar	Woods	January 16, 1888	Cleveland
44	David Josiah Brewer	Matthews	December 18, 1889	B. Harrison
45	Henry Billings Brown	Miller	December 29, 1890
46	George Shiras, Jr.	Bradley	July 26, 1892
47	Howell Edmunds Jackson	Lamar	February 18, 1893
48	Edward Douglass White	Blatchford	February 19, 1894	Cleveland*
49	Rufus Wheeler Peckham	Jackson	December 9, 1895
50	Joseph McKenna	Field	January 21, 1898	McKinley
51	Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.[1]	Gray	December 4, 1902	T. Roosevelt
52	William R. Day	Shiras	February 23, 1903
53	William Henry Moody	Brown	December 12, 1906
54	Horace Harmon Lurton	Peckham	December 20, 1909	Taft*
55	Charles Evans Hughes	Brewer	May 2, 1910
56	Willis Van Devanter	White	December 15, 1910
57	Joseph Rucker Lamar	Moody	December 15, 1910
58	Mahlon Pitney	Harlan	March 13, 1912
59	James Clark McReynolds	Lurton	August 29, 1914	Wilson
60	Louis Brandeis	Lamar	June 1, 1916
61	John Hessin Clarke	Hughes	July 24, 1916
62	George Sutherland	Clarke	September 5, 1922	Harding*
63	Pierce Butler	Day	December 21, 1922
64	Edward Terry Sanford	Pitney	January 29, 1923
65	Harlan Fiske Stone	McKenna	February 5, 1925	Coolidge
66	Owen Josephus Roberts	Sanford	May 20, 1930	Hoover*
67	Benjamin N. Cardozo	Holmes	February 24, 1932
68	Hugo Black	Van Devanter	August 17, 1937	F. Roosevelt*
69	Stanley Forman Reed	Sutherland	January 25, 1938
70	Felix Frankfurter	Cardozo	January 17, 1939
71	William O. Douglas	Brandeis	April 4, 1939
72	Frank Murphy	Butler	January 16, 1940
73	James F. Byrnes	McReynolds	June 12, 1941
74	Robert H. Jackson	Stone	July 7, 1941
75	Wiley Blount Rutledge	Byrnes	February 8, 1943
76	Harold Hitz Burton	Roberts	September 19, 1945	Truman*
77	Tom C. Clark	Murphy	August 18, 1949
78	Sherman Minton	Rutledge	October 4, 1949
79	John Marshall Harlan II	Jackson	March 16, 1955	Eisenhower*
80	William J. Brennan[1]	Minton	March 19, 1957
81	Charles Evans Whittaker	Reed	March 19, 1957
82	Potter Stewart[1]	Burton	May 5, 1959
83	Byron White	Whittaker	April 11, 1962	Kennedy
84	Arthur Goldberg	Frankfurter	September 25, 1962
85	Abe Fortas	Goldberg	August 11, 1965	L. Johnson
86	Thurgood Marshall	Clark	August 30, 1967
87	Harry Blackmun	Fortas	May 12, 1970	Nixon*
88	Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr.	Black	December 6, 1971
89	William Rehnquist	Harlan	December 10, 1971
90	John Paul Stevens	Douglas	December 17, 1975	Ford
91	Sandra Day O'Connor	Stewart	September 21, 1981	Reagan*
92	Antonin Scalia	Rehnquist	September 17, 1986
93	Anthony Kennedy	Powell	February 3, 1988
94	David Souter	Brennan	October 2, 1990	G. H. W. Bush
95	Clarence Thomas	Marshall	October 15, 1991
96	Ruth Bader Ginsburg	White	August 3, 1993	Clinton
97	Stephen Breyer	Blackmun	July 29, 1994
98	Samuel Alito	O'Connor	January 31, 2006	G. W. Bush*
99	Sonia Sotomayor	Souter	August 6, 2009	Obama

• * Also appointed one Chief Justice, except Washington, who appointed three Chief Justices.

[edit] Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3. 
• Christensen, George A. (1983) Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices, Yearbook. Supreme Court Historical Society.
• Christensen, George A., Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited, Journal of Supreme Court History, Volume 33 Issue 1, Pages 17 - 41 (19 Feb 2008), University of Alabama.
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1568021267. 
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791013774. 
• Hall, Kermit L., ed (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356. 
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543. 
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0815311761. 

[edit] See also

• Associate Justice
• Chief Justice of the United States
• Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States
• List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
• List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by court composition
• List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by seat

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Recess appointments are a notable exception. See U.S. v. Woodley 751 F.2d 1008, 10014; Recess appointments to the Supreme Court are exceptionally rare. Only two Chief Justices and six Associate Justices have received recess appointments, and only John Rutledge was not subsequently confirmed by the Senate. The last President to make a recess appointment to the Supreme Court was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
2. ^ "salaries". House.gov. http://www.house.gov/daily/salaries.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-31. 

[edit] External links

• Historic collection of Supreme Court decisions and biographies indexed by judge name
• Members of the Supreme Court of the United States from the Court's website.