How many women are currently on the US Supreme Court?

Answer 1

There are currently three women on the US Supreme Court.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was nominated by President Clinton in 1993 to replace retiring Justice Byron White.

Prior to joining the Court, Ginsburg spent thirteen years as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, volunteered as a lawyer with the ACLU, and taught at Rutger's University Law School and at her alma mater, Columbia Law School.

Ginsburg was the second woman appointed to the US Supreme Court.

Sonia Sotomayor

Sonia Sotomayor President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to fill the vacant seat of retired Justice David H. Souter. Justice Sotomayor was approved by a Senate vote of 68-31 and sworn-in on August 8, 2009.

Sotomayor is a 1979 graduate of Yale Law School who, contrary to rumor, passed the bar exam on her first attempt.

Prior to joining the Court, Sotomayor spent nine years in private practice before President George H. W. Bush nominated her for an opening on the US District for the Southern District of New York in 1992. In 1998, she was commissioned to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, making her the Supreme Court justice with the most lower-court judicial experience.

Sotomayor is the first Latina and only the third female justice appointed in the Supreme Court's history.

Elena Kagan

President Obama nominated US Solicitor General Elena Kagan on May 9, 2010, to succeed Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired from the Court on June 29. The Senate Judiciary Committee recommended Kagan's by a vote of 13-6; she was confirmed by a full Senate vote of 63-37 on Thursday, August 5, 2010.

Kagan, who is the fourth woman to join the US Supreme Court, will also increase the female census on the bench to three for the first time in history. She is expected to take the Oaths of Office on August 7, 2010.

President Obama also appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Court, in 2009.