Supremes wear the rarest of robes

115

The total number of people who have served as justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. With Associate Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement on Jan. 27 after 28 years of service, President Joe Biden will have the privilege of selecting just the 116th justice. Biden has pledged to pick an African-American woman to cure a historical under­representation. But there are other underrepresented groups: No graduate of a public law school has been selected since 1957. And the court’s only Protestant, Neil Gorsuch, was raised Roman Catholic prior to joining an Episcopal church in Colorado.

92%

The percentage of the ­previous nominees to the court since 1986, 12 of 13, who have affiliations with law schools at Harvard or Yale.

$286,700

The salary of the Chief Justice of the United States in 2022, a figure dwarfed by an average compensation of more than $1 million per year for big law firm partners, according to a survey by Major, Lindsey & Africa.

6

The number of times the Supreme Court changed its number of justices prior to settling on nine in 1869.

17

The average length of term (in years) for Supreme Court justices over the past century, according to an analysis done by the Harvard Business Review.