Currently, there are three retired Associate Justices: Sandra Day O ' Connor, who assumed senior status on January 31, 2006, David H. Souter, who assumed senior status on June 29, 2009, and John Paul Stevens, who assumed senior status on June 29, 2010.

Because Justice John Paul Stevens had recused himself, only eight Justices heard the case, and it ended in a 4 – 4 tie.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O ' Connor wrote the majority opinion ; they were joined by David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, and opposed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia.

However, four justices ( Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg, and Stevens ) specifically disputed this in their dissenting opinions, and the remaining two Justices ( Kennedy and O ' Connor ) declined to join Rehnquist's concurrence on the matter.

Four justices ( Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer ) dissented as to stopping the recount.

Justice Stevens ' dissent ( joined by Justices Breyer and Ginsburg ) concluded as follows: The per curiam opinion in Bush v. Gore did not technically dismiss the case, and instead " remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Justice Stevens wrote a dissent in which Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer joined.

Justices Burger, Stewart, Rehnquist, and Stevens supported a strict interpretation and, thus, ruled in favor of Bakke.

At this point, only two of the Justices were obvious supporters of Roe v. Wade: Blackmun, the author of Roe, and Stevens, who had joined opinions specifically reaffirming Roe in City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health and Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

At the conference of the Justices two days after oral argument, Justice Souter defied expectations, joining Justices O ' Connor, Stevens, and Blackmun, who had likewise refused to do so three years earlier in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services.

All these opening sections were joined by Justices Blackmun and Stevens for the majority.

William Rehnquist, Byron White, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas — the six Justices who did not join the plurality opinion — wrote or joined opinions in which they partially concurred and partially dissented from the decision.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justices William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, and Lewis Powell.

In the majority were Justices O ' Connor, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion which Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined.

Four Justices ( Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer ) each wrote their own opinion with various combinations of the other three joining.

Nonetheless, Associate Justices Stevens and Kennedy expressed their dislike of the system.

" Justice Blackmun, joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens, dissented, citing that " his case is no more about a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy ," as the Court purports to declare, ante at 191, that Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557 ( 1969 ), was about a fundamental right to watch obscene movies, or Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 ( 1967 ), was about a fundamental right to place interstate bets from a telephone booth.

Justice Stevens, with whom Justices Brennan and Marshall joined in dissent, dissented further from the majority opinion: " the Court orders the dismissal of respondent's complaint even though the State's statute prohibits all sodomy ; even though that prohibition is concededly unconstitutional with respect to heterosexuals ; and even though the State's post hoc explanations for selective application are belied by the State's own actions.

The court's 5-4 decision was written by Justice Kennedy and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer, and Souter, and cited international law, child developmental science, and many other factors in reaching its conclusion.

Justice Souter, however, joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer, argued that enacting VAWA was well within congressional power under the Commerce Clause, and stated that the majority was reviving an old and discredited interpretation of the Commerce Clause.

Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, argued that it was primarily the responsibility of Congress, and not the courts, to put limits on Congress's power under the Commerce Clause.

In both cases, William J. Brennan wrote the majority opinion, joined by Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy ( Kennedy also authored a separate concurrence in Johnson ), and the dissenters in both cases were then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist ( who authored a dissent in Johnson ), and Justices John Paul Stevens ( who authored dissents in both cases ), Byron White and Sandra Day O ' Connor.

Titled " The Supreme Court of the Amalgamated Kingdom of England and France ", participating judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Some 149 sitting United States federal judges are Harvard Law School graduates ; six of the nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States attended the law school ( Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan ).

Six of the current nine members of the court attended HLS: Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, who also served as the Dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009.

Justices Ginsburg and Breyer concurred in judgment, but stated that they did not subscribe to the Court's belief that the affirmative measures in question would be unnecessary in 25 years.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are alumni of the D. C.

Of the four justices outside the plurality, Justices Ginsburg and Souter limited their opinions to their position that Section 4001 ( a ) of Title 18 of the United States Code ( the Non-Detention Act ; enacted to prevent the sort of detention that occurred when the United States placed Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps during World War II ) prevented the detention of U. S. citizens.

Justices Breyer, Stevens, O ' Connor, Souter, and Ginsburg established the majority for two parts of the Court's opinion:

* Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Ginsburg, and Breyer, dissented on one section of the part of the Court's opinion written by the Chief Justice.

The Court split 5-4, with Justice Stephen Breyer filing a dissenting opinion in which he was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Alumni of the Columbia Law Review include United States Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chief Judge of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Wilfred Feinberg, United States Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr., Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Director of the National Economic Council, Stephen Friedman ( PFIAB ); Columbia Law School professor Herbert Wechsler, Yale Law School professors Felix S. Cohen and Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., New York University Law School professor Samuel Estreicher, Michigan Law School professor Mark D. West, and former New York Governor George Pataki, amongst others.

Numerous current and former United States Supreme Court Justices have delivered the Opperman Lecture, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sandra Day O ' Connor, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and late Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist.

Justice Souter wrote a lengthy dissent in which he was joined by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer.

A cultural icon, Nancy Drew has been cited as a formative influence by a number of women, from Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O ' Connor and Sonia Sotomayor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former First Lady Laura Bush.

Alumni also include current United States Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor, as well as a number of former Justices, including Abe Fortas, Potter Stewart and Byron White ; several heads of state around the world, including Karl Carstens, the fifth President of Germany, and Jose P. Laurel, the president of the Republic of the Philippines ; and the current deans of eight of the ten top-ranked law schools in the United States: Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Michigan, Virginia, and Penn.

In 2009 and 2010, respectively, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were confirmed as Supreme Court Associate Justices, making them the third and fourth female justices, but because Justice O ' Connor had previously retired, this made the first time three women have served together on the Supreme Court.

Among Calabresi's expansive group of former students are Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, former United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey, feminist legal scholar and law professor at the Universities of Michigan and Chicago Catharine MacKinnon, former White House Counsel Gregory Craig, Senator John Danforth, Harvard Law School professor Richard H. Fallon, Jr., civil and human rights legal scholar Kenji Yoshino, noted torts scholar and law professor at the University of Virginia Kenneth Abraham, and New York University School of Law torts professor Catherine Sharkey.

Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Breyer, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Kagan were present, while Alito, Ginsburg and Sotomayor did not attend.

Justices Breyer and Souter wanted to remand the case to the Florida Supreme Court to permit that court to establish uniform standards of what constituted a legal vote and then manually recount all ballots using those standards.

Two of those four dissenters ( Justices Breyer and Souter ) acknowledged that the counting up until December 9 had not conformed with Equal Protection requirements.

Justice O ' Connor wrote a plurality opinion representing the Court's judgment, which was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Breyer and Kennedy.

Justices in the majority ( particularly Justices Kennedy and Breyer ) disagreed with Justice Stevens as to whether the " charge " of conspiracy could be maintained to justify the determination of unlawful combatant status.

It was not this decision that proved especially controversial among commentators, and indeed, the proposition gained seven out of nine votes ; Justices Souter and Breyer joined the majority of five — but only, it should be emphasized, for the finding that there was an Equal Protection violation.

He has also welcomed two United States Supreme Court Justices -- Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito -- to the Law School for exclusive speaking engagements.