Texas A&M University School of Law Texas A&M Law Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 7-2018 The Way Pavers: Eleven Supreme Court-worthy Women Meg Penrose Texas A&M University School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar Part of the Judges Commons, Law and Gender Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Meg Penrose, The Way Pavers: Eleven Supreme Court-worthy Women, Harv. J.L. & Gender Online 1 (2018). Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/1261 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Texas A&M Law Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Texas A&M Law Scholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE WAY PAVERS: ELEVEN SUPREME COURT-WORTHY WOMEN * MEG PENROSE Introduction Four women have served as associate justices on the United States Supreme Court. Since the Court’s inception in 1789, more than 160 individuals have been nominated to serve as Supreme Court justices.1 Five nominees, or roughly 3 percent, have been women.2 To help put this gender dearth in perspective, more men named “Samuel” have served as Supreme Court justices than women.3 Thirteen U.S. presidents have each nominated more people to the Supreme Court than the total number of women that have served on the Court.4 Finally, there are currently as many Catholics serving on the Supreme Court as the number of women confirmed in the Court’s entire history.5 Women, once thought of as “one-at-a-time-curiosities” on the bench, now constitute nearly one-third of all state and federal judges.6 They occupy the highest posts on state supreme courts and can be found, in similar numbers, at the trial and appellate * Meg Penrose is a full Professor at Texas A&M University School of Law.