Three serving Associate Justices have received promotions to Chief Justice ; Edward Douglass White in 1910, Harlan Fiske Stone in 1941, and William Rehnquist in 1986.

Though no official vote was taken, Justice Black and Chief Justice Burger wanted to reverse McMillan ’ s order, while Justices Douglas, Harlan, Brennan and Marshall wanted a strong affirmation of the order ; Justices White, Stewart and Blackmun did not express a strong feeling either way.

Justices Brennan, White, Marshall and Blackmun concluded in one plurality opinion that race could be used as a factor when it was for the purpose of remedying substantial chronic underrepresentation of certain minorities in the medical profession.

Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and White, however, disagreed with a rigid and literal interpretation of Title VI.

Justices John Marshall Harlan, Howell Edmunds Jackson, Edward Douglass White, and Henry Billings Brown dissented from the majority opinion.

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.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justices William H. Rehnquist ( later Chief Justice ) and Byron White issued dissenting opinions.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote the opinion for a unanimous court, joined by Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun and Lewis F. Powell.

* Justices Byron White and William O. Douglas expressed similar concerns about the apparent arbitrariness with which death sentences were imposed under the existing laws.

Because the opinions of Justices Stewart and White were the narrowest, finding only that the death penalty as applied under the statutes in existence at the time was cruel and unusual, theirs are often considered the controlling majority opinions.

Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices White and Day.

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 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.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist's opinion was joined in its entirety only by Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy.

Harlan was usually joined by the other moderate members of the Court: Justices Potter Stewart, Tom Clark, and Byron White.

Elzy entertained at the White House, December 15, 1937, for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's luncheon for the wives of U. S. Supreme Court Justices.

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.

A plurality of the Court ( Justices Douglas, White, Marshall and Brennan, who wrote the plurality's opinion ) found the military's benefit policy unconstitutional, because there was no reason why military wives needed benefits any more than similarly situated military husbands.

Justice William J. Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court, in which he was joined by Justices White, Marshall, Powell and Stevens ( Justice Blackmun joined all but one part of the opinion ; Blackmun, Powell, Stevens, and Stewart wrote concurrences ).

Justice White filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Justices Rehnquist and Kennedy joined.

Then-Chief Justice Rehnquist, along with Justices White, Kennedy, and Souter, Stevens, Blackmun joined the majority opinion.

Joined by Chief Justice Melville Fuller and Associate Justices Steophen Johnson Field, John Marshall Harlan, Horace Gray, Henry Billings Brown, George Shiras, Jr., Howell Edmunds Jackson, and Edward Douglass White, the court ruled that the government had a right to regulate interstate commerce and ensure the operations of the Postal Service, along with a responsibility to " ensure the general welfare of the public.

Chief Justice Rehnquist authored the Opinion for the Court, joined by Justices White, Scalia, Kennedy and O ' Connor, contending that " the people " intended to be protected by the Fourth Amendment were the people of the United States, and that the defendant's " legal but involuntary presence " on U. S. soil ( a direct result of his arrest ) failed to create a sufficient relationship with the U. S. to allow him to call upon the Constitution for protection.

Chief Justice Burger asked Justices Stewart and Blackmun to determine whether Roe and Doe, among others, should be heard as scheduled.

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.

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

" 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.

Chief Justice Burger and Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, and William H. Rehnquist, each appointed by President Richard Nixon, dissented.

Justices Marshall, Blackmun, Scalia, and Kennedy joined Brennan, with Kennedy also writing a concurrence.

In the dissenting opinions, Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist suggested that the result of this ruling would be the elimination of publicly supported single-sex educational opportunities.

Justices Blackmun and Powell, and Chief Justice Burger concurred in the result, but, in an opinion written by Justice Powell, declined to decide whether discrimination on the basis of sex should attract strict scrutiny.

Justice Blackmun wrote the opinion for the court and Justices Marshall, Stevens, O ' Connor, and Souter joined.

" Justices William J. Brennan and Harry Blackmun delivered concurring opinions, while Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens dissented.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It was the first case that provided an opportunity to overturn Roe since the two liberal Justices, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, were replaced with the Bush-appointed Justices David Souter and Clarence Thomas.

However, the plurality decision jointly written by Justices Souter, O ' Connor, and Kennedy is recognized as the lead opinion with precedential weight because each of its parts were concurred in by at least two other Justices, albeit different ones for each part.

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.

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.

Justice David Souter wrote the majority opinion, which seven Justices joined.

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:

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.

Former residents have included former Police Chief Charles Ramsey, Hubert Humphrey, Marvin Gaye, and former Supreme Court Associate Justices Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and David Souter.

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.