The Irish court – SCOTUSblog

The ethnic milestones and makeup of the Supreme Court have long been topics of fascination, from the notion of a “Jewish seat” filled by those who followed Justice Louis Brandeis as the first Jewish justice in 1916 to the recognition that Justice Antonin Scalia received as the first Italian American on the court in 1986 to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s embrace of her role since 2009 as the first Latina to serve. Less attention has been paid to the court’s considerable Irish connections.

Indeed, justices of Irish descent have served on the Supreme Court since its very inception. This included two on the very first court, Justices John Rutledge and James Iredell, and one more appointed by President George Washington, Justice William Paterson, who was the only justice born in Ireland itself. Since then, there have been 22 more Irish-American justices, including four of the current justices (Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett). Overall, slightly more than 20% of the 116 individuals who have served on the court have had Irish heritage.

This was all brought to light last week at a Supreme Court Historical Society event to mark the publication of “The Emerald Bench: The History of the Irish American Justices on the Supreme Court.”

Those Irish-American justices and their ancestors who immigrated to the United States or raised their families here through times of hardship and discrimination present “stories of perseverance, determination, courage, and a little bit of luck,” said Sean Meehan, the author of the 255-page coffee-table book published by Rizzoli under the auspices of the historical society and the Irish American Judicial Institute.

The event felt a bit like St. Patrick’s Day in November. The current Irish ambassador to the United States, Geraldine Byrne Nason, was in attendance, as was Justice Gerard Hogan of the nine-member Supreme Court of Ireland, whose formal education included time at the University of Pennsylvania. A reception in the East Conference Room after the lecture also continued the theme, featuring mini-corned beef sandwiches, Irish baked potato hors d’oeuvres, Irish cream liqueur-infused martinis, and brownies with an Irish cream frosting.

And to top things off, the author was introduced by Kavanaugh. (Fun fact: Kavanaugh is the only one of the four “Irish justices” with Irish heritage on both sides, that of his father, Everett Kavanaugh Jr., and his mother, Martha Kavanaugh, née Murphy.) 

At the event, Kavanaugh went into his Irish heritage in detail. “On my dad’s side of the family, my great grandfather, Patrick Kavanaugh, came to the United States from County Roscommon in 1878,” the justice said. “Patrick became an iron molder in a hardware factory in New Haven [Connecticut], married a woman named Mary—surprise—and had six children, including my grandfather Everett, whom I knew well for the first 14 years of my life until Everett passed away in [the] 1970s.”

On his mother’s side, Kavanaugh said, “My great-great grandfather, Michael Murphy, came to the United States from County Wicklow in 1865. He settled in New Jersey and was a carpenter. My grandfather Tom Murphy served as a lieutenant commander aboard a destroyer in the Pacific during the World War II, before he and his wife, Rose Marie, settled in Washington, D.C., and had five children, the eldest of who was my mom.”

Kavanaugh also touted his links to three other Irish-American justices featured in the book, including retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, “a great Irish-American” for whom he clerked and whom he succeeded in 2018. And he occupies chambers used by two other prominent Irish-American justices, Justice Frank Murphy during his 1940-49 tenure and Justice William Brennan Jr., who served from 1956 to 1990.

Meehan then spoke about his book and Irish-American justices in general. Meehan said the 25 Irish-American justices include some giants of the court as well as one, John McKinley (1838-52), who has been described as the “least impressive and least significant member” of the court under the long tenure of Chief Justice Roger Taney. Another, the first Justice John Marshall Harlan (1877-1911) was not even fully aware of his Irish heritage into well into his tenure on the court, Meehan said.

The author highlighted five justices from different eras who put a significant mark on the court (and who were presumably or known to be aware and proud of their Irish roots). 

Justice William Paterson (1773-1806), as noted above, was the lone justice born in Ireland. His Scottish Presbyterian parents left Ulster (Northern Ireland) before Paterson’s second birthday in 1747 and settled in Princeton, New Jersey. Paterson was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 before becoming a U.S. senator from New Jersey. Paterson was appointed by Washington in 1793 to fill the second vacancy on the early court.

He “more or less created the Supreme Court as co-author of the Judiciary Act of 1789,” Meehan said, referring to the statute that established the federal judiciary and set the high court’s original size at six justices. 

Justice John McLean (1829-61) was another early justice with roots that were Scots-Irish. (“A uniquely American term,” Meehan said.) Although McLean had ruled against escaped slaves as both an Ohio Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court justice, he became a dissenter in such cases as Prigg v. Pennsylvania, an 1842 decision striking down state laws that ran counter to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793; and Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 decision that refused to extend U.S. citizenship to people of Black African descent.

“McLean would continue to wage an incremental fight against slavery on the court until his death just before the Civil War,” Meehan said.

Then there was Justice Joseph McKenna (1898-1925), born in 1845 in Philadelphia, the son of an Irish immigrant father and English immigrant mother. They lived in that industrial city’s Irish quarter at a time when nativist and anti-immigration fervor began to take hold, with the church where McKenna was baptized becoming the center of the city’s deadliest anti-Catholic riots.

With the threats of such riots lingering, the McKenna family moved to California in 1854 with the hope of economic opportunity and religious tolerance. The only safe journey that the family could afford involved traveling by steamship to Panama, crossing the isthmus by land and boarding another ship to the Golden State. McKenna thrived there, becoming a lawyer and politician before President William McKinley nominated him to succeed Justice Stephen Field.

Meehan also highlighted Justice Pierce Butler (1923-39), a child of Irish Catholic immigrant parents who was born in Minnesota on St. Patrick’s Day in 1866; and Brennan, whose parents were both born in County Roscommon. Over his 34 years on the court, “this grandson of an illiterate Irish farmer would become one of the most influential justices of the 20th century, and perhaps ever,” he said.

Meehan concluded on a mildly political note.

“As proud as we are to be Irish and we should be, I hope these stories also cause us to reflect on the American part of being Irish American,” he said. “We should be proud of a country that at one time welcomed people – our ancestors – from a foreign land. People who were desperate, who took that leap of faith, believing that this was a place where they could create a better life for their children and grandchildren, and people whose lives vindicated that belief.”

He added, “I hope we can reflect on how we all benefited from the leap of faith our foreparents took, how this country’s great judicial system has been honed and enriched by the children and grandchildren of immigrants, not just the Irish ones.”