Supreme Court Web page (www.supremecourtus.gov)

Justices Ranked from more liberal to more conservative. See MQ scores below.

	Name	State	Appointed		Law School	Prior	Religion
			Yr	Pres
	John Paul Stevens Retiring	Illinois	1975	Ford	Northwestern		Protestant
	Ruth Bader Ginsburg	New York	1993	Clinton	Harvard	Appeals court	Jewish
	Stephen G. Breyer	Massachusetts	1994	Clinton	Harvard	Appeals court	Jewish
	Sonia Sotomayor	New York	2009	Obama	Yale	Appeals court	Catholic
	Elena Kagan (nominee)	New York	2010	Obama	Harvard	Solicitor General	Jewish
	Anthony M. Kennedy	California	1988	Reagan	Harvard		Catholic
	John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice	Maryland	2005	Bush, G. W.	Harvard	Appeals court	Catholic
	Samuel Alito	New Jersey	2006	Bush, G. W.	Yale	Appeals court	Catholic
	Antonin Scalia	Virginia	1986	Reagan	Harvard	Appeals court	Catholic
	Clarence Thomas	Georgia	1991	Bush, G. H. W.	Yale	Appeals court	Catholic

Listed by MQ "Martin-Quinn" scores developed by political scientists Andrew Martin (Washington University) and Kevin Quinn (UC Berkeley School of Law) to measure "the relative location of each U.S. Supreme Court justice on an ideological continuum."
Note: Justice Sotomayor was new and didn't have a score when we last updated this, so she was placed where general opinion thought she would fit.

This is less true of recent appointees. Nominees' backgrounds these days often include work for the executive branch in Washington and substantial service on a federal appeals court, so more is know about how they might handle federal issues.

Justin Driver, a law professor at the University of Texas, has a theory about why that might be so. "It's the friends factor," he said. Conservatives with established social networks in Washington, he said, are less likely than newcomers to be swayed by the city's relatively liberal political culture. "In the conservative imagination," Professor Driver said, "there is an idea that Republican-appointed justices are worn down by Georgetown dinner parties."

See: Ideological Drift Among Supreme Court Justices: Who, When, And How Important?, by Lee Epstein, Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn & Jeffrey A. Segal* at the Northwestern University Law Review