Ring in the New Year

Some challenging trivia questions

Let’s start the New Year with a set of trivia questions about Supreme Court justices and judicial confirmations:

Q1. Who is the tallest justice in the history of the Supreme Court? Who is the shortest justice? And what is the difference in height between the two?

Hint: Although Thurgood Marshall nicknamed her “Shorty” during her clerkship with him, Elena Kagan is not the shortest justice.

This man is one answer

Q2. Of the 17 chief justices in the history of the Supreme Court, five previously served as associate justice. Three of those five—Edward Douglass White (whose tenure as chief ran from 1910 to 1921), Harlan F. Stone (1941 to 1946), and William H. Rehnquist (1986 to 2005)—were directly elevated from their positions as associate justice. But two other individuals resigned their positions as associate justice and returned to the Court some time later as chief justice.

Which two individuals served nonconsecutively as associate justice and chief justice?

Q3. There have been fourteen justices who previously served in the Senate. Who is the only Supreme Court justice to have subsequently served as a United States senator?

Q4. Antonin Scalia was nominated by one president and appointed by another—not as a Supreme Court justice but as head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. (He was nominated by Richard Nixon and appointed by Gerald Ford.)

Who is the only Supreme Court justice to be nominated to his seat on the Court by one president and appointed by another?

Q5. Charles Pickering was the second recess appointee to a court of appeals seat who did not win Senate confirmation to that seat. Who was the first?