As of this writing there have been 113 U.S. Supreme Court justices. The first six, including Chief Justice John Jay, were appointed by President Washington and approved by acclimation on September 26, 1789; the most recent is Neil Gorsuch, nominated by President Trump and sworn in on April 10 of this year.
Eight of them have been Jewish. While it is common knowledge that Louis Brandeis was the first Jewish justice to serve on the Supreme Court (1916 – 1939), few know he was actually the second Jew to be offered a nomination to the court.
In 1853, President Millard Fillmore wanted to appoint Louisiana Senator Judah P. Benjamin to serve as the first Jewish justice, and most commentators at the time suggested that, particularly given the breadth of Democratic support for his nomination, he would easily have been confirmed by the Senate. However, Benjamin declined the offer and ultimately went on to serve as secretary of state for the Confederacy during the Civil War.
The origins of the idea of a so-called Jewish seat began when a specific Supreme Court seat was filled by four consecutive Jews: Benjamin Cardozo (1932 – 1938), Felix Frankfurter (1939 – 1962), Arthur Goldberg (1962 – 1965) and Abe Fortas (1965 – 1969). Cardozo’s appointment by President Hoover generated controversy: Although Cardozo was almost universally deemed highly qualified for the seat, many were uncomfortable because with Brandeis already on the court there now would be two Jews serving simultaneously. Nonetheless, the Senate went on to confirm Cardozo unanimously.
Bitterly opposed to the notion of Jews on the Supreme Court was Justice James Clark McReynolds, a flagrant anti-Semite who refused even to speak to Brandeis for three years. He reacted to Cardozo’s appointment by grumbling “another one” and he later skipped Felix Frankfurter’s swearing-in, exclaiming “My God, another Jew on the Court!”
As a collector, I noticed years ago that no formal photograph of the 1916 Supreme Court exists and when I researched the issue I discovered why: McReynolds, rejecting the traditional seniority hierarchy, refused to sit next to Brandeis.
Brandeis’s highly controversial appointment by President Wilson, which marked the beginning of a 53-year tradition of an informal “Jewish seat” on the court, came to an end when President Nixon nominated Harry Blackmun, a Protestant, to replace Fortas after his resignation (1969).
The extent of Nixon’s anti-Semitism is now well recognized, so it is hardly surprising that he gave no credence to the notion of a Jewish seat; in fact, according to Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean, writing in The Rehnquist Choice (2001), Nixon and then-Attorney General John Mitchell sneered at the very notion of nominating a Jew to the Supreme Court.
President Reagan nominated Douglas H. Ginsburg in 1987, but that nomination was ultimately withdrawn. Thus, twenty-four years would pass without a Jew on the Supreme Court until the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993), followed by Stephen Breyer (1994), both nominated by President Clinton, and Elena Kagan (2010), nominated by President Obama. (Kagan occupies the seat once held by Brandeis.)
When Breyer took his seat, it was just the second time that two Jewish justices served simultaneously (Brandeis and Cardozo served concurrently from 1932-1938). When Kagan was nominated, marking the first time in history that three Jewish justices would serve together, not everybody was thrilled by the prospect. For example, columnist and television pundit Pat Buchanan remarked that “If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.” (Had the Senate confirmed President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, there would be four Jews now serving on the High Court.)
Shown here are two Supreme Court letters on the subject of a Jewish seat, the first by Justice Harry A. Blackmun and the second by Justice Byron White. While both reject the idea of a “Jewish seat,” what I find particularly interesting is their contrasting views on whether the president should consider race and gender in nominating justices to the court.
Justice Blackmun’s view is that Supreme Court appointments should not be made based on ethnicity or other category but rather “should go to the best person available at the time.” Justice White, however, sees nothing wrong with preferring women and minorities for a Supreme Court seat because “they are deemed to be underrepresented in the judicial system.”
In this May 13, 1996 correspondence on his Supreme Court letterhead, Justice Blackmun provides a virtual guided tour of the history of the alleged Jewish seat on the court, which he concludes never existed:
Dear Mr. Singer:
…It is so easy to speculate about the character of a particular seat on the Supreme Court. The seat which you and your students have been inclined to refer to as the “Jewish seat” was originally occupied by a series of New Englanders and often was referred to as the “New England seat” or the “Massachusetts seat.” Then, Justice Cardozo was appointed and was succeeded by Justices Frankfurter, Goldberg, and Fortas. I suppose that an appointing President often is inclined to appoint a new Justice in the mold of his predecessor. I am not Jewish, however, although I occupied that seat for twenty-four years. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to whom you refer, does not occupy that seat; she succeeded Justice Byron R. White.
You seem to ask for my personal views. I feel that appointments to this court should not be made on the basis of ethnicity, or geography, or some similar category, but should go to the best person available at the time. An appointing President, of course, will always say this is precisely what he does.
There have been many great Justices scattered over the several seats. I think it is a mistake, however, to attempt to discern a specific pattern of appointments.
In this May 28, 1996 correspondence on his Supreme Court letterhead, Justice White agrees that the very idea of a Jewish seat is folly because during most of his three decades on the Court, there wasn’t a single Jewish justice:
Dear Mr. Singer:
For most of my 31 years on the Court, there was no Jewish Justice, and hence I doubt that there is such a seat; i.e., that there always will be at least one Justice who is Jewish.
But if one assumes that the President has before him for nomination two people of satisfactory competence, a man and a woman, a white or a black (or other minority), how should he choose? Presidents are constantly preferring capable women and minorities for seats on the lower federal courts because they are deemed to be underrepresented in the judicial system. Within limits, I see nothing objectionable in such a practice.
White served from 1962 to 1993, during which time the only Jewish justice to serve with him was Abe Fortas, four years from 1965 until his resignation in 1969.
But by no means do all Supreme Court experts agree that there never was a Jewish seat. Two fascinating examples are President Lyndon Johnson and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Before LBJ ultimately nominated Fortas for the court, he had a list of three men on his list – and all were Jews. They were Paul Freud and Henry Friendly, both of whom had studied under Frankfurter at Harvard and clerked for Brandeis, and Edward Levi, who later went on to become the first Jewish attorney general (1975). Before making the appointment, the president asked his attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach, to prepare a Justice Department memorandum on whether to reconsider the long-standing tradition of a Jewish seat on the Supreme Court. Katzenbach wrote:
I think most Jews share with me the feeling that you should not seek a Jewish appointment for the “Jewish Seat” on the Court. It is somewhat offensive to think of religion as a qualification…. At the same time, I think it undesirable for there to be no Jew on the Court for too long a period and I think it would be desirable if a Jew were appointed to the Court before 1968.
Katzenbach concluded that Fortas met all requirements as both a Jew and a highly qualified nominee, and LBJ made the appointment.
Delivering the Louis D. Brandeis Lecture on February 11, 2003, Ginsburg explained that there once was such a Jewish seat, but that when she and Justice Breyer were appointed to the court, religion played no part in the decision: “No one saw us as filling a Jewish seat.” (In fact, however, before her nomination Bill Clinton had specifically spoken of his interest in reviving the Jewish seat.)
Ginsburg explained that the atmosphere of the country had changed and that the anti-Semitism so apparent during earlier times was no longer present. In fact, Ginsburg herself has a silver mezuzah on the doorpost of her office and a Tzedek, tzedek tirdof (“Justice, justice ye shall pursue,” the famous verse from Deut. 16:20) poster on her wall.
Finally, this discussion suggests a terrific trivia question: Who is the only president to place two Jews on the Supreme Court? Answer: Bill Clinton (Ginsburg and Breyer). Many commentators argue that even if a Jewish seat did once exist, it effectively came to an end when Clinton nominated a second Jewish justice to sit with another Jew on the court.
