Six women have served as justices of the United States Supreme Court: Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Four of them — Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson — sit on the Court today, making it the most gender-diverse bench in the institution’s history.1Supreme Court of the United States. Current Members The first of the six, O’Connor, didn’t arrive until 1981. For its first 192 years, the Court was an exclusively male institution.
Sandra Day O’Connor (1981–2006)
Sandra Day O’Connor broke the Court’s gender barrier when President Ronald Reagan nominated her in 1981, fulfilling a campaign promise to put a woman on the nation’s highest bench. Her prior career had already included several firsts. She served in the Arizona State Senate and became the first female majority leader of any state legislature in the country, and she sat as a judge on the Maricopa County Superior Court. The Senate confirmed her 99 to 0.2National Archives. President Ronald Reagans Nomination of Sandra Day OConnor to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
On the bench, O’Connor became the Court’s most influential swing vote, often casting the deciding ballot in cases on federalism, individual liberties, and reproductive rights. Her most consequential opinion was the plurality she co-authored with Justices Kennedy and Souter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). That opinion replaced the strict scrutiny framework of Roe v. Wade with an “undue burden” standard, allowing pre-viability abortion restrictions only if they did not place a substantial obstacle in a woman’s path.3Justia. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa v Casey Casey governed abortion law for three decades until the Court overturned it in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022.
O’Connor retired on January 31, 2006, after 24 years on the Court. She died on December 1, 2023, at age 93, from complications of advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993–2020)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg had already shaped the Court’s sex-discrimination jurisprudence before she ever sat on it. As a litigator for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in the 1970s, she argued six cases before the Supreme Court and won five, persuading the justices to treat sex-based classifications as a serious problem under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.4Clinton White House Archives. Ruth Bader Ginsburg Release President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1980, where she served for thirteen years before President Bill Clinton elevated her to the Supreme Court in 1993. The Senate confirmed her 96 to 3.5United States Senate. Supreme Court Nominations
As a justice, Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in United States v. Virginia (1996), which struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s male-only admissions policy and held that any government classification based on sex requires an “exceedingly persuasive justification.” Over 27 years on the bench, she became equally known for her forceful dissents in cases involving voting access and workplace discrimination. Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, from complications of pancreatic cancer, while still actively serving.6National Archives. In Memoriam Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Sonia Sotomayor (2009–Present)
President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 to fill the seat vacated by Justice David Souter, and she became the first Hispanic justice and the third woman to serve on the Supreme Court.7United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court – Sonia Sotomayor Her path ran through nearly every level of the system. She started as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, spent years in private practice, was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and was elevated by President Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1998.8Federal Judicial Center. Sotomayor, Sonia
The Senate confirmed her 68 to 31.9U.S. Senate. US Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress – 1st Session Sotomayor brought something that had grown rare on the modern Court: ground-level trial experience with juries and the daily mechanics of litigation.
Elena Kagan (2010–Present)
President Obama’s second appointment came in 2010, when he nominated Elena Kagan to replace the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.10Federal Judicial Center. Kagan, Elena Kagan’s resume looked nothing like her predecessors’. She had never served as a judge. Her career had run through academia and government: professor and then dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009, followed by service as the first woman to hold the office of Solicitor General of the United States, the lawyer who represents the federal government before the Supreme Court.11United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court – Elena Kagan
The Senate confirmed her 63 to 37.12U.S. Senate. US Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress – 2nd Session Her arrival alongside Sotomayor marked the first time three women served simultaneously on the Court, a milestone that had taken more than two centuries to reach.
Amy Coney Barrett (2020–Present)
Amy Coney Barrett’s path to the Court was shaped by extraordinary timing. Justice Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, weeks before a presidential election. President Donald Trump nominated Barrett, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, on September 26. The Senate confirmed her on October 26 by a vote of 52 to 48, completing the process in just 27 days.5United States Senate. Supreme Court Nominations
Before joining the federal bench, Barrett spent years as a law professor at Notre Dame Law School, where she developed a judicial philosophy rooted in originalism and textualism.13The White House. SCOTUS During her confirmation hearings she described the approach plainly: the Constitution’s meaning is fixed at the time it was ratified, and a judge’s job is to apply that original meaning rather than update it. She acknowledged that originalism “is not a mechanical exercise” and that judges who share the philosophy can still reach different conclusions on hard cases.
Barrett became the fifth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court. Her appointment shifted the Court’s ideological balance, contributing to major decisions on administrative law, firearms regulation, and the overturning of the abortion precedents O’Connor had helped establish.
Ketanji Brown Jackson (2022–Present)
Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court in 2022, after President Joe Biden nominated her to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. She took her seat on June 30, 2022, following a Senate confirmation vote of 53 to 47.5United States Senate. Supreme Court Nominations
Jackson’s professional background is unlike any other current justice’s. She served as an assistant federal public defender in Washington, D.C., giving her firsthand experience representing criminal defendants, a perspective that had been absent from the Court for decades. She also worked at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, where President Obama designated her Vice Chair in 2010.14United States Sentencing Commission. February 16, 2010
She joined the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2013, then briefly served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2021 before her Supreme Court nomination. She had also clerked for Justice Breyer, the same justice whose retirement opened the seat she now holds. Her range of experience, from public defender through trial and appellate judging, gives her a vantage point on the criminal justice system no colleague on the current bench shares.
The Narrowing Confirmation Gap
One pattern runs across all six appointments: confirmation votes have grown steadily more contentious. O’Connor was confirmed 99 to 0 in 1981.2National Archives. President Ronald Reagans Nomination of Sandra Day OConnor to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ginsburg cleared the Senate 96 to 3 in 1993. By 2022, Jackson’s margin was 53 to 47.5United States Senate. Supreme Court Nominations The credentials of recent nominees have been at least as strong as those of earlier ones. What has changed is the political character of the confirmation process itself, which now functions as one of the most polarized events in American government.
Each of the six brought something the Court had lacked. O’Connor arrived from a state legislature, Ginsburg from civil rights litigation, Sotomayor from the trial bench, Kagan from a law school deanship and the Solicitor General’s office, Barrett from academic work on originalism, and Jackson from representing indigent clients. The bench still does not mirror the country’s demographics, but it looks far more like America than it did for its first two centuries.