Associate Justice

Institutional context

Barrett is the fifth woman on the Supreme Court of the United States. Her confirmation brought the simultaneous female composition of the Court to four (Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, with Ginsburg's seat being the one she filled).

Career path

Barrett earned a BA from Rhodes College and a JD from Notre Dame Law School, graduating first in her class in 1997. She clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman on the DC Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. She held a faculty position at Notre Dame Law School from 2002, including as the Diane and M.O. Miller Research Chair of Law. President Trump appointed her to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017.

Appointment

Following the death of Justice Ginsburg, President Trump nominated Barrett on 26 September 2020. The Senate confirmed her on 26 October 2020 by 52–48, and she was sworn in the same evening, 38 days after nomination — among the most rapid Supreme Court confirmations of the modern era.

Tenure

Active. Her early years on the Court included her concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) and the majority opinion in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021).

Cluster context

Barrett's 2020 appointment is in the principal cluster window. Together with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's 2022 confirmation, the early 2020s constitute the densest period of female Supreme Court appointments in the institution's history — two confirmations in less than two years against the prior baseline of one per decade or longer.

Sources

• Supreme Court of the United States — Past Justices
• Federal Judicial Center — Barrett biography