who is the present chief justice of the u.s. supreme court?
John Roberts
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 In May 2009 , President Barack Obama nominated a Catholic woman , Sonia Sotomayor , to replace retiring Justice David Souter . Her confirmation raised the number of Catholics on the Court to six , compared to three non @-@ Catholics ( all Jewish ) . With Antonin Scalia 's death in February 2016 , the number of Catholic Justices went back to five . 

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 All Supreme Court justices were white and of European heritage until the appointment of Thurgood Marshall , the first African American Justice , in 1967 . Since then , only two other non @-@ white Justices have been appointed , Marshall 's African @-@ American successor , Clarence Thomas in 1991 , and Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 . 

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 In a 2012 interview , Scalia said that he would prefer Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals as his successor . President Barack Obama said at the time of Scalia 's death that he would nominate his successor in " due time " . On March 16 , 2016 , he nominated Merrick Garland , Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit , to fill Scalia 's seat on the Court . 

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 Of the 112 justices , 108 ( 96 @.@ 4 % ) have been men . All Supreme Court justices were males until 1981 , when Ronald Reagan fulfilled his 1980 campaign promise to place a woman on the Court , which he did with the appointment of Sandra Day O 'Connor . O 'Connor was later joined on the Court by Ruth Bader Ginsburg , appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993 . After O 'Connor retired in 2006 , Ginsburg would be joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan , who were successfully appointed to the Court in 2009 and 2010 , respectively , by Barack Obama . The only other woman to be nominated to the Court was Harriet Miers , whose nomination to succeed O 'Connor by George W. Bush was withdrawn under fire . 

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 Not only have all justices been attorneys , nearly two thirds had previously been judges . As of 2010 , eight of the nine sitting justices previously served as judges of the United States Courts of Appeals , while the most recent appointment , Justice Elena Kagan , served as Solicitor General , the attorney responsible for representing the federal government in cases before the Court . Few justices have a background as criminal defense lawyers , and Thurgood Marshall is reportedly the last justice to have had a client in a death penalty case . 
