In what is undoubtedly a high water-mark for such demographics, six of the nine current Justices of the Supreme Court are Catholic.
Both the sculptures adorning the architecture outside the Supreme Court Building and an ornate frieze inside it contain representations of lawgivers from the ancient world, one of whom is undoubtedly Judeo-Christian in origin. Both pieces of artwork depict Moses holding the Ten Commandments (although only visible on the tablets are the Decalogue’s more “secular” prohibitions against murder, theft, perjury, etc).
While the court is rightly intended to be “blind” to background and creed in its reading of the Constitution, religion remains deeply interwoven within the fabric of American judicial history. The individuals serving the country in all three branches of government are individuals, and their personalities and thinking are shaped by their religious imaginations and belief systems. The separation of church and state (which not only sought to prevent religious litmus tests for posts and offices, but also intended to protect believers from an overbearing national state) does not mandate one somehow adjudicate a case or make a decision from an impossible supposed position of conscience-free neutrality. And while it wisely does not endorse a theocracy, from the Catholic perspective it demands a willingness to seek justice and better quality of life for the poor, voiceless and marginalized, as well as respect for the dignity and rights of every human person, all in the effort to produce the common good.
In 1836, President Andrew Jackson named the first Catholic to the bench, Roger Brooke Taney. Sadly, his most famous legacy is writing the majority opinion in the terrible Dred Scott decision which ruled that slaves were not intended to be included in the phrase “all men are created equal” and that Congress could not restrict the spread of the practice to the territories. Yet, Taney freed his own slaves whom he had inherited and commented that he felt the institution was a blemish on the national identity. Taney eventually administered the oath of office to Lincoln, although this of course was a strictly procedural development and does not reflect personal beliefs in any way.
From Taney’s day forward, there has been an inconsistently practiced tradition of having a Catholic presence on the bench. This “Catholic seat” has, however, involved such conversations as Sherman Minton’s having married a Catholic and the fact that the young James F. Byrnes had attended St. Patrick’s School in Charleston, S.C., at the behest of his Irish-American mother, though both Justices identified themselves as Protestant.
At the encouragement of New York’s Francis Cardinal Spellman, President Eisenhower named William J. Brennan to the Court in 1956. Since that time there has been at least one practicing Catholic on the Court. In 2009, President Barack Obama named the first Catholic woman, as well as the first Hispanic, to the court — Bronx native of Puerto Rican descent, Sonia Sotomayor.
As acting members of society and the largest single religious voting bloc in the country (non-Catholic Christians are more numerous but splintered in denomination), Catholics have long sought and defended their right to representation on the Court and in every aspect of American life. Proudly accepting this mantle, we must now be willing to afford that right to others without hesitation.
Michael M. Canaris is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.