PROFILBARU.COM

Levi Woodbury was the first Justice to have formally attended a law school.

The Constitution of the United States does not require that any federal judges have any particular educational or career background, but the work of the Court involves complex questions of law – ranging from constitutional law to administrative law to admiralty law – and consequentially, a legal education has become a de facto prerequisite to appointment on the United States Supreme Court. Every person who has been nominated to the Court has been an attorney.^[1]

Before the advent of modern law schools in the United States, justices, like most attorneys of the time, completed their legal studies by "reading law" (studying under and acting as an apprentice to more experienced attorneys) rather than attending a formal program. The first Justice to be appointed who had attended an actual law school was Levi Woodbury, appointed to the Court in 1846. Woodbury had attended Tapping Reeve Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut, the most prestigious law school in the United States in that day, prior to his admission to the bar in 1812. However, Woodbury did not earn a law degree. Woodbury's successor on the Court, Benjamin Robbins Curtis, who received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1832, and was appointed to the Court in 1851, was the first Justice to bear such a credential.^[2]

Associate Justice James F. Byrnes, whose short tenure lasted from June 1941 to October 1942, was the last Justice without a law degree to be appointed; Stanley Forman Reed, who served on the Court from 1938 to 1957, was the last sitting Justice from such a background. In total, of the 114 justices appointed to the Court, 49 have had law degrees, an additional 18 attended some law school but did not receive a degree, and 47 received their legal education without any law school attendance.^[2]

Currently serving justices are listed in bold below.

Four or more justices

Harvard Law School – 22 alumni; 18 graduates
1. Harry Blackmun
2. Louis Brandeis
3. William J. Brennan Jr.
4. Stephen Breyer
5. Henry Billings Brown – also studied law at Yale, did not receive law degree from either
6. Harold Hitz Burton
7. Benjamin Robbins Curtis
8. Felix Frankfurter
9. Melville Fuller – did not graduate; Chief Justice
10. Ruth Bader Ginsburg – graduated from Columbia Law School
11. Neil Gorsuch
12. Horace Gray
13. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
14. Ketanji Brown Jackson
15. Elena Kagan
16. Anthony Kennedy
17. William Henry Moody – did not graduate
18. Lewis F. Powell Jr. – LL.M. graduate
19. John Roberts – Chief Justice
20. Edward Terry Sanford
21. Antonin Scalia
22. David Souter
Yale Law School – 11 alumni, 9 graduates
1. Samuel Alito
2. Henry Billings Brown – also studied law at Harvard, did not receive law degree from either
3. David Davis
4. Abe Fortas
5. Brett Kavanaugh
6. Sherman Minton – LL.M. graduate, attended Indiana University
7. George Shiras Jr. – did not graduate
8. Sonia Sotomayor
9. Potter Stewart
10. Clarence Thomas
11. Byron White
Columbia Law School – 7 alumni, 4 graduates
1. Benjamin N. Cardozo – completed two years, did not graduate
2. William O. Douglas
3. Ruth Bader Ginsburg – also attended Harvard Law School
4. Charles Evans Hughes – Chief Justice
5. Joseph McKenna – studied at the law school, did not graduate
6. Stanley Forman Reed – also attended University of Virginia School of Law, did not graduate from either
7. Harlan F. Stone – Chief Justice

Three justices

University of Michigan Law School
1. George Sutherland
2. Frank Murphy
3. William Rufus Day - did not graduate
Litchfield Law School (defunct)
1. Henry Baldwin
2. Ward Hunt
3. Levi Woodbury – first justice to have attended law school

Two justices

Albany Law School
1. David J. Brewer
2. Robert H. Jackson – completed one-year program, awarded certificate of completion^[3]
Cincinnati Law School (University of Cincinnati College of Law)
1. Willis Van Devanter
2. William Howard Taft – Chief Justice (and former President)
Cumberland School of Law
1. Howell Edmunds Jackson
2. Horace Harmon Lurton
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
1. Sherman Minton
2. Wiley Rutledge – studied part-time before leaving and completing degree at University of Colorado Law School^[4]^[5]
Northwestern University School of Law
1. Arthur Goldberg
2. John Paul Stevens
Stanford Law School
1. Sandra Day O'Connor
2. William Rehnquist – Chief Justice
University of Virginia School of Law
1. James Clark McReynolds
2. Stanley Forman Reed – also attended Columbia Law School, did not graduate from either
Washington and Lee University School of Law
1. Joseph Rucker Lamar
2. Lewis F. Powell Jr. – also received an LL.M. from Harvard Law School

One justice

Centre College School of Law
- Fred M. Vinson – Chief Justice^[6]
Howard University School of Law
- Thurgood Marshall
Middle Temple - one of the four Inns of Court in London, England
- John Rutledge
Mitchell Hamline School of Law then known as St. Paul College of Law
- Warren E. Burger – Chief Justice
New York Law School
- John Marshall Harlan II
Notre Dame Law School
- Amy Coney Barrett
Transylvania University School of Law
- John Marshall Harlan
Tulane University Law School
- Edward White – Chief Justice
University of Alabama School of Law
- Hugo Black
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
- Earl Warren – Chief Justice
University of Colorado Law School
- Wiley Rutledge – originally studied at Indiana University prior to attending the University of Colorado
University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law
- Charles Evans Whittaker
University of Pennsylvania Law School
- Owen Roberts
University of Texas School of Law
- Tom C. Clark

University or college educated

These justices were educated at the equivalent of an undergraduate level, but did not receive legal education at the graduate level, the model under which law schools in the United States are currently organized.

Carleton College
- Pierce Butler
Case Western Reserve University
- John Hessin Clarke
College of William & Mary
- John Marshall – Chief Justice
- Philip P. Barbour
- Bushrod Washington
- John Blair Jr.
Columbia University
- John Jay – Chief Justice
- Samuel Blatchford
Dartmouth College
- Salmon P. Chase – Chief Justice
Dickinson College
- Robert Cooper Grier
- Roger B. Taney – Chief Justice
Emory University
- Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar
Harvard University
Kenyon College
- Stanley Matthews
Middlebury College
- Samuel Nelson
Princeton University
- Oliver Ellsworth – Chief Justice
- William Johnson
- Henry Brockholst Livingston
- William Paterson
- Mahlon Pitney
- Smith Thompson
- James Moore Wayne
Rutgers University
- Joseph P. Bradley
Saint Joseph's University
- Joseph McKenna – also studied at Columbia Law School for a month between nomination to the Court and confirmation
Transylvania University
- Samuel Freeman Miller - earned a medical degree
- Robert Trimble^[7]
University of Georgia
- John Archibald Campbell
University of St Andrews
- James Wilson – also attended the University of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow but did not graduate
Washington and Lee University
- Thomas Todd
Williams College
- Stephen Johnson Field
Yale University
- William Strong
- Morrison Waite -- Chief Justice
- William Burnham Woods

No university education

Some justices received no education in a university setting, but were instead either trained through apprenticeships or were self-taught, as was common with many lawyers prior to the mid-20th century. This practice is often known as reading the law.

Noah Haynes Swayne

References

^ Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited (2002) p. 182.
^ ^a ^b Henry J. Abraham, Justices, Presidents, and Senators: A History of the U.S. Supreme Court Appointments from Washington to Bush II (2007), p. 49.
^ John Q. Barrett, Albany in the Life Trajectory of Robert H. Jackson, 68 Alb. L. Rev. 513, 529 (2005)
^ Ferren, John M.; Rutledge, Wiley (2004). Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court: The Story of Justice Wiley Rutledge. Univ of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-2866-3.
^ Fowler v. Harper, "Justice Rutledge and The Bright Constellation" (1965) pp.9-10
^ St. Clair, James E.; Gugin, Linda C. (2002). Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson of Kentucky: A Political Biography. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. pp. 13–14.
^ "Previous Associate Justices: Robert Trimble, 1826-1828". Supreme Court Historical Society. Retrieved 2024-06-20.

"Judges of the United States Courts". Official website of the Federal Judicial Center. Archived from the original on November 7, 2004. Retrieved November 21, 2004.
- source for seat information
"Members of the Supreme Court from the Supreme Court of the United States" (PDF). Official website of the Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved May 29, 2005.
- PDF (28 kB)
- source for term of active service