Ladies of the Supreme Court

For years they were known as The Nine Old Men or The Brethren. But on July 7, 1981, President Ronald Reagan shocked America by nominating little-known Arizona Appeals Court Judge, Sandra Day O’Connor, to the position of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, the first woman in that body’s 192- -year history. Since that historic appointment, three additional women, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, have been elevated to the court. Some judicial scholars have proposed that adding this feminine touch to the court has fundamentally changed the manner in which the nation’s most important legal issues have been decided. We will look at the backgrounds of the Ladies of the Supreme Court and discuss their impact on American jurisprudence.