January 14th, 2026, 7:00 pm - 8:15 pm
Throughout its history, the Supreme Court has had eight Jewish justices. This began with the iconic figure of Louis Brandeis, who was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916. Over the years a so-called “Jewish seat” was unofficially reserved for persons of Jewish descent. Despite the concept of one seat, multiple Jewish justices have served simultaneously. Indeed, from 2010 to 2020, three Jewish justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan) sat together. However, today Elena Kagan is the only one Jewish justice, and when she is gone, the era of the Jewish justice may be effectively over.
This lecture will first review the history of the Jewish justices — whose biographies were often even more colorful than their jurisprudence. It will then explore how the justices’ Judaism affected them, sometimes in rather surprising ways. The session will conclude with why the era of the Jewish justices may be over — and what that says about Judaism in America in general.
Zachary Baron Shemtob is the Executive Editor of SCOTUSblog, a leading website and resource on the United States Supreme Court. Prior to joining SCOTUSblog, he was a criminal defense lawyer at the boutique firm Lankler, Siffert & Wohl. Before that, Zach was an assistant professor of criminology at Central Connecticut State University, where he focused on legal decision making.
Zach graduated from Georgetown Law where he served as editor-in-chief of the law review. He clerked for federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Zach has written extensively on the Supreme Court and its jurisprudence for both the popular press and academic journals, and has also appeared as a commentator on NPR, C-SPAN, and several other leading news outlets.
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