2026-03-27T10:00:56.059Z / CNN
首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨（John Roberts）的祖先可追溯到英格兰西北部的一个煤矿村庄。大法官埃琳娜·卡根（Elena Kagan）的祖父母是俄罗斯犹太移民。而大法官塞缪尔·阿利托（Samuel Alito）的父亲1914年出生于意大利，名叫萨尔瓦托雷·阿拉蒂（Salvatore Alati），不久后家族移民美国，他的名字被“美国化”。
其他大法官的家族根基在美国本土更深，其后代可追溯至爱尔兰、法国和西班牙。最高法院的两位黑人法官克拉伦斯·托马斯（Clarence Thomas）和凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊（Ketanji Brown Jackson）都写道，他们的祖先是被作为奴隶从非洲带到美国的。
九位大法官各有一段独特的起源故事。有些人如阿利托、卡根和大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔（Sonia Sotomayor）对自己的民族身份感到常自豪，索托马约尔的家族在波多黎各成为美国领土之前就住在那里了。对于其他大法官来说，种族遗产则更为遥远。大法官尼尔·戈萨奇（Neil Gorsuch）是第四代科罗拉多人，他将自己定义为家族西部经历的产物。
他们都将面临一个关乎美国身份核心的历史性争议。从各自的个人视角和不同的意识形态立场出发，他们将决定写入宪法第十四修正案的出生地公民权概念是否会持续存在。
1868年内战后通过的修正案规定：“所有在合众国出生或归化并受其管辖的人，都是合众国和他们所居住州的公民。”
4月1日将审理的案件源于唐纳德·特朗普总统2025年1月20日的行政命令，该命令将终止几乎所有在美国出生的儿童无论其父母移民身份如何都自动成为公民的保障。政府依据该条款“受其管辖”，将排除父母为非法移民或持临时签证在美国的儿童所生的孩子。
该命令是特朗普更广泛的关闭边境议程的一部分，立即遭到移民权益倡导者、民权组织和民主党州检察长的反对。下级法院法官多次表示，该命令违反了第十四修正案和最高法院先例。（大法官们此前审理过该争议的一个早期案例，但只是为了评估下级法院法官使用全国范围禁令阻止特朗普政策的情况。）
大法官们将直接面对宪法保障的出生地公民权是否占优的问题。本质上的问题是：一个人何时成为美国人？
这个问题可能会让一些大法官回顾自己的家族起源和个人身份。
小约翰·格洛弗·罗伯茨（Chief Justice John Glover Roberts Jr.）将在4月1日主持公开辩论，随后主持大法官们的私下投票。他的祖先来自英国和斯洛伐克移民，他们在美国寻求更好的生活。一些人因饥荒和政治动荡而被迫离开。
他的曾曾祖父理查德·格洛弗（Richard Glover）是英国阿瑟顿村的一名矿工。格洛弗和他的妻子玛丽·林斯基（Mary Linskey，爱尔兰女子）1863年来到美国。他们的一个女儿嫁给了乔治·罗伯茨（George Roberts）。这对夫妇的儿子（也叫乔治，是首席大法官的祖父）定居在宾夕法尼亚州约翰斯敦。
他们的儿子约翰·格洛弗·罗伯茨（John Glover Roberts）是他们的第10个孩子，出生在他们第一个孩子出生二十年后。
罗伯茨的母系血统可追溯到匈牙利地区，家族姓氏为波德拉茨基（Podraczky）和格姆楚扎（Gmucza），比他父亲的英国血统晚一代人来到美国。他们也来到了匹兹堡东部阿勒格尼山脉的煤炭和钢铁中心约翰斯敦。在那里，罗斯玛丽·波德拉茨基（Rosemary Podrasky，当时的拼写）遇到了约翰·格洛弗·罗伯茨。
他们的儿子，即首席大法官，继承了父亲的名字。罗伯茨和他的三个姐妹在印第安纳州北部长大。
资历最老的大法官克拉伦斯·托马斯（Clarence Thomas）在1991年被任命时成为美国第二位黑人法官。托马斯指出，他的家族谱系大多已失传，这与大多数非洲裔美国人的祖先从奴隶制开始的生活经历相似。
托马斯在2007年的回忆录中写道，他的祖先是西非洲奴隶，居住在佐治亚州、南卡罗来纳州和佛罗里达州的屏障岛屿和低地地区。他回忆说，佐治亚州的祖先被称为“吉奇人”（Geechees），而南卡罗来纳州的则被称为“古拉人”（Gullahs）。这些西非洲奴隶的后裔在获得自由后的几代人中，仍然保持着独特的克里奥尔语言和文化。
大法官父亲M.C.托马斯（M.C. Thomas）的亲戚在佐治亚州萨凡纳以南的一个种植园工作。大法官说，他相信母亲莱奥拉·威廉姆斯（Leola Williams）的祖先也在同一个种植园劳作。托马斯小时候住在佐治亚州的平角点，父亲离开了家庭，母亲难以抚养孩子。于是托马斯和一个兄弟由萨凡纳的外祖父母抚养长大，他们塑造了他的人生轨迹。
“我的祖父由他的祖母抚养长大，而他的祖母出生于奴隶制时期，”托马斯在圣母大学法学院最近的一次活动中描述家族挑战时说。“他非常重视教育，但他看不懂热水器的使用说明。对我来说，学习阅读也不容易。我把一本《方克与瓦格纳尔斯词典》（Funk & Wagnalls dictionary）放在手边；我珍视文字，珍视语言。”
托马斯还将他的回忆录命名为《我的祖父之子》（My Grandfather’s Son）。
小塞缪尔·安东尼·阿利托（Samuel Anthony Alito Jr.）的祖父母来自意大利南部的小镇。他父亲的父母1914年来到美国，带着他们刚出生的儿子萨尔瓦托雷，他当年早些时候出生在卡拉布里亚的萨利尼乔尼切（Saline Joniche）。这个男孩后来成为大法官的父亲。大法官的母亲罗斯·弗拉杜斯科（Rose Fradusco）出生在美国，她的意大利家族不久后也来到了美国。
“当时有很大的压力要求他们采用美国的方式、美国的习惯，甚至改变人们的名字，”阿利托在去年12月接受意大利报纸采访时回忆道。“所以我父亲的真名是萨尔瓦托雷·阿拉蒂（Salvatore Alati），当他在埃利斯岛或上学时，他们的意大利名字都被改成了美国化的名字，所以我父亲才成了塞缪尔·阿利托（Samuel Alito）。我想他们只是没听清祖母告诉他们的名字，也不太在意。这就是我们成为阿利托（Alito）的原因。”
这个家族定居在新泽西州特伦顿，阿利托经常谈到他父母早年的挣扎。“我父亲还是婴儿时就被带到这个国家。他十几岁时就失去了母亲。他在贫困中长大，”阿利托在2006年参议院确认听证会上自我介绍时说。
“尽管他以全班第一的成绩高中毕业，但他没钱上大学，原本准备在工厂工作。但最后一刻，特伦顿地区的一位好心人安排给他提供了50美元的奖学金……1935年大学毕业后，在大萧条时期，他发现意大利裔美国人的教师工作很难找到，他不得不暂时找其他工作。”阿利托的母亲也是一名教师，他有一个妹妹。
阿利托在今年2月获得了大希腊基金会国际奖，该奖项授予在促进意大利方面表现杰出的杰出人士。
索尼娅·玛丽亚·索托马约尔的祖先可以追溯到19世纪的波多黎各，当时西班牙控制着该岛。1898年（美西战争后）结束，该岛成为美国领土。1917年，根据《琼斯法案》，所有在波多黎各出生的人都成为美国公民。（然而，岛上居民仍缺乏完全的州权，无法参加总统选举。）
“我家族的命运变迁追随了该岛的经济潮流：咖啡种植园被逐步出售，直到昔日的地主们开始在别人的甘蔗田劳作，”索托马约尔在2013年的回忆录中写道。
她补充道：“我们从山区农场搬到了像圣日耳曼、拉哈斯、马纳蒂、阿雷西沃、巴塞隆内塔这样的小镇；过了一段时间，又搬到了当时圣胡安桑图尔塞的贫民窟；从那里，大陆向我们招手……”
她的父母是20世纪40年代第一波移民到纽约的波多黎各人。她的母亲塞利娜·贝兹（Celina Baez）出生在拉哈斯镇附近，她在入伍妇女军团时离开岛屿。她先被派往佐治亚州，然后被分配到纽约的陆军登船港。她的父亲胡安·索托马约尔（Juan Sotomayor）也在二战期间移民到纽约市。
这对夫妇最终与他们的女儿和一个小儿子在布朗克斯定居。索托马约尔称自己是“自豪的纽约波多黎各人”（proud Nuyorican）。
2024年，作为美国图书馆拉丁美洲诗歌活动的一部分，大法官描述了一首在家庭聚会上演唱的诗歌：诺埃尔·埃斯特拉达（Noel Estrada）的《En Mi Viejo San Juan》（《在我古老的圣胡安》）。“这首诗就像是所有生活在波多黎各以外的波多黎各人的国歌，”她说。
同样，埃琳娜·卡根的犹太家族身份与她的美国经历交织在一起。她的四位祖父母中有三位是移民，于20世纪初来到美国；第四位（她父亲的母亲）出生于美国，父母是新移民。他们都是俄罗斯犹太人，祖籍现在属于乌克兰。
她的母亲前身为格洛丽亚·格特曼（Gloria Gettelman），在一个说意第绪语的家庭长大。在学校学习英语后，她最终进入宾夕法尼亚州立大学攻读大学，后在哥伦比亚大学获得教育硕士学位，在亨特学院高中任教25年。
她的父亲罗伯特·卡根（Robert Kagan）也毕业于宾夕法尼亚州立大学，后在耶鲁大学获得法律学位。这对夫妇在曼哈顿定居，未来的大法官在这里长大。卡根有两个兄弟，是她居住的上西区附近东正教犹太教堂中第一个参加“成年礼”（bat Torah）的女孩。“这是我年轻时伟大的犹太经历，”她曾说。
卡根有时会在自己的法律意见和法庭陈述中使用意第绪语短语。在2023年的一起证券纠纷中，当一名律师告诉大法官们：“好吧，这只是在没人提起并迫使这个问题自‘阿特拉斯屋顶’（Atlas Roofing）案以来……”时，卡根反驳道：“没人有那种……你知道，有胆大包天——引用我的民族——自阿特拉斯屋顶案以来提起这个问题……”
最高法院的新任大法官们的家族外国根源则更为久远。
尼尔·麦吉尔·戈萨奇（Neil McGill Gorsuch）的祖先在美国扎根了几个世纪。他的父系戈萨奇家族起源于英国和德国。他的母亲前身为安妮·麦吉尔（Anne McGill），有爱尔兰血统，她的家族也在几代前来到美国。这些家族向西迁移，最终在科罗拉多州丹佛定居。
“我的故事植根于美国西部，是那里人民的产物，”戈萨奇大法官在2019年的书中写道。“我骑自行车几分钟就能到祖父母家，他们对我的影响和任何人一样大。我的祖父约翰（John）在丹佛还是个小牧场小镇时长大……我的外祖父乔（Joe）在城市的另一边，在一个贫穷的爱尔兰和意大利裔社区长大……”
约翰·戈萨奇和他的儿子大卫（David，后来成为大法官的父亲）都是律师，大法官的母亲安妮也是如此。（他们有三个孩子。）安妮·戈萨奇在1981年成为美国环境保护局局长，这比她的儿子尼尔·戈萨奇进入华盛顿的权力中心要早。
戈萨奇的妻子路易丝（Louise）在英国出生和长大，大法官曾写道，他向她介绍了他深爱的西部，包括“新墨西哥州和俄克拉荷马州美洲原住民部落的自豪传统和悲惨历史”。
布雷特·迈克尔·卡瓦诺（Brett Michael Kavanaugh）的家族两边都有爱尔兰祖先。
卡瓦诺父系的曾祖父帕特里克·卡瓦诺（Patrick Kavanaugh）于19世纪末来到美国，定居在康涅狄格州。他的一个儿子埃弗雷特（Everett）有一个儿子，也叫埃弗雷特，他娶了玛莎·墨菲（Martha Murphy），墨菲的根源也主要是爱尔兰人。
玛莎的父母汤姆（Tom）和罗斯玛丽·墨菲（Rose Marie Murphy）最初住在新泽西州。汤姆在二战期间在太平洋服役后，全家搬到华盛顿特区，他们有五个孩子，玛莎是最大的。埃弗雷特和玛莎都成为律师，抚养他们唯一的儿子布雷特。“当人们问我作为独生子是什么感觉时，”卡瓦诺说，“我说这取决于你的父母是谁。我很幸运。”
这个家族仍然强烈认同祖国，大法官的父亲埃弗雷特获得了双重公民身份。
去年圣帕特里克节，卡瓦诺大法官出席了副总统JD·万斯（JD Vance）家中举行的庆祝活动，爱尔兰总理米哈伊尔·马丁（Micheál Martin）也在场。
艾米·维维安·科尼·巴雷特（Amy Vivian Coney Barrett）出生并成长于新奥尔良，她有爱尔兰和法国血统，在美国扎根已久。她的父母迈克尔·科尼（Michael Coney）和前身为琳达·瓦思（Linda Vath）的妻子有七个孩子，第一个是女儿艾米。
与其他近期出版书籍的大法官不同，巴雷特对祖先的描述较为简略。她赞赏地提到她的祖父母在二战期间祖父在美国海军服役时交换信件。她的新奥尔良背景很大程度上定义了这位大法官，她曾提到新奥尔良的辛辣美食和长达数周的狂欢节传统。
“我是七个孩子中的老大。我现在自己也有七个孩子，有点复制了我父母的生活。我也是29个孙辈中的老大，”她在3月国会图书馆的一次活动中说，描述了她为大家庭的孩子们搭建长凳，观看花车并接住扔出的珠子串的场景。
最新的大法官凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊（Ketanji Brown Jackson）公开表达了自己的家族遗产。她的名字凯坦吉·奥尼卡（Ketanji Onyika）是非洲名字，意为“可爱的人”（Lovely One）。杰克逊在迈阿密长大，有一个弟弟。她的父母约翰尼（Johnny）和埃勒里·布朗（Ellery Brown）都是教育工作者，她的父亲后来也成为了律师。
在她2024年的回忆录中，杰克逊写道，她听说过家族故事“祖先被从非洲用锁链捆绑在船舱里带到这里，在佐治亚州、弗吉尼亚州和南卡罗来纳州的战前种植园劳作了几个世纪”。
她说，她的祖先在战后时期更容易追溯，当时黑人姓名开始出现在自由民局和人口普查记录中。
杰克逊写道：“只有在那时，我家族的根——布朗（Browns）、罗斯（Resses）、格林（Greens）、安德森（Andersons）、卢瑟福（Rutherfords）、梅韦瑟（Mayweathers）、阿姆斯特德（Armsteads）以及其他以这些名字变体闻名的家族——才终于被记录在美国生活的史册中。”
Supreme Court justices will consider the future of birthright citizenship. Here’s how their families came to America
2026-03-27T10:00:56.059Z / CNN
Chief Justice John Roberts’ ancestral line traces to a coal mining village in northwestern England. Justice Elena Kagan’s grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. And Justice Samuel Alito’s father was born Salvatore Alati in Italy in 1914 shortly before the family emigrated and his name was “Americanized.”
Other justices inherited family roots deeper on US soil, with their later generations going back to Ireland, France and Spain. The court’s two Black justices, Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson, have written of ancestors brought to America from Africa in bondage.
Each of the nine has a distinct origin story. Some express regular pride in their ethnicity, like Alito, Kagan, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose people lived in Puerto Rico long before it became a US territory. For other justices, ethnic heritage is more distant. Justice Neil Gorsuch is a fourth generation Coloradan who defines himself in terms of his family’s Western experience.
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They are all about to take up a historic dispute that goes to the core of American identity. From their personal vantage points and separate ideological approaches, they will decide if the concept of birthright citizenship, cemented in the Fourteenth Amendment, endures.
Adopted in 1868 after the Civil War, the amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The case to be heard on April 1 arises from President Donald Trump’s January 20, 2025, executive order that would end the guarantee that nearly all children born on US soil become automatic citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Relying on the clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” the administration would exclude children born to undocumented immigrants or people in the US on temporary visas.
The order grew out of Trump’s broader agenda to close the border and was immediately challenged by immigrant advocates, civil rights groups and Democratic state attorneys general. Lower court judges repeatedly said it violates the Fourteenth Amendment and high court precedent. (The justices took up an earlier chapter of the controversy, but only to assess lower court judges’ use of nationwide injunctions to block the Trump policy.)
The justices will directly confront whether the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship prevails. The question is, essentially: When does one become an American?
It’s a query that may bring some of the justices back to their own family origins and individual identities.
Chief Justice John Glover Roberts Jr., who will open the public arguments on April 1 and then lead the justices’ later private vote, descends from English and Slovakian immigrants who were looking for a better life in America. Some were driven out by famine and political strife.
His great-great-grandfather Richard Glover was a miner in the English village of Atherton. Glover and his wife, an Irish woman named Mary Linskey, came to America in 1863. One of their daughters married George Roberts. The son of that couple (also named George and who would be grandfather to the chief justice) settled in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Their son, John Glover Roberts, was their 10th child, born two decades after their first.
Roberts’ maternal line, tracing to the region of Hungary with family names of Podraczky and Gmucza, came to America a generation after his father’s English side. They, too, made their way to the coal and steel hub of Johnstown in the Allegheny Mountains east of Pittsburgh. That’s where Rosemary Podrasky (as the name was then spelled) met John Glover Roberts.
Their son, the chief justice, bears his father’s name. Roberts and his three sisters grew up in northern Indiana.
The senior-most associate justice, Clarence Thomas became only the nation’s second Black justice when he was appointed in 1991. Thomas has observed that much of his family tree has been lost to him, as it has for most African Americans whose ancestors’ lives here began in slavery.
Thomas wrote in a 2007 memoir that he was descended from West African slaves who resided on the barrier islands and in the low country of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. He recounted that his people in Georgia were called “Geechees,” while those in South Carolina were known as “Gullahs.” Such descendants of West African slaves maintained, for generations after their freedom, the distinctive creole language and culture.
Relatives of the justice’s father, M.C. Thomas, worked on a plantation just south of Savannah, Georgia. The justice said he believed the ancestors of his mother, Leola Williams, toiled on the same plantation. When Thomas was young and living in Pin Point, Georgia, his father left the family, and his mother had trouble caring for her children. So Thomas and a brother were raised by his maternal grandparents in Savannah. They shaped the course of his life.
“My grandfather was raised by his grandmother, who had been born into slavery,” Thomas said as he described his family’s challenges at a recent University of Notre Dame Law School appearance. “He treasured education deeply, yet he could not read the instructions on his hot water heater. Learning to read was not easy for me either. I kept a Funk & Wagnalls dictionary close at hand; I treasured words, treasured language.”
Thomas also entitled his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”
Samuel Anthony Alito Jr.’s grandparents came from small towns in southern Italy. His father’s parents arrived in the US in 1914, carrying their infant son Salvatore, who had been born earlier that year in Saline Joniche, Calabria. That boy would become the justice’s father. The justice’s mother, Rose Fradusco, was born in the US shortly after her own Italian family arrived there.
“There was a lot of pressure at that time to adopt American ways, American habits, even to the point of changing people’s names,” Alito recounted in an interview with an Italian newspaper last December. “So my father’s real name was Salvatore Alati and when at Ellis Island or when children went to school, their Italian first names were all changed to Americanized names, so that’s how my father became Samuel Alito. I think they just didn’t hear what my grandmother had told them, and they didn’t care that much. So that’s how we became Alito.”
The family settled in Trenton, New Jersey, and Alito has often spoken of his parents’ early struggles. “My father was brought to this country as an infant. He lost his mother as a teenager. He grew up in poverty,” Alito said as he introduced himself at his 2006 Senate confirmation hearing.
“Although he graduated at the top of his high school class, he had no money for college, and he was set to work in a factory. But at the last minute, a kind person in the Trenton area arranged for him to receive a $50 scholarship … After he graduated from college, in 1935, in the midst of the Depression, he found that teaching jobs for Italian Americans were not easy to come by, and he had to find other work for a while.” Alito’s mother was also a teacher; he had one younger sister.
Alito in February was awarded the Magna Grecia Foundation international prize, given to prominent individuals who’ve distinguished themselves in the promotion of Italy.
Sonia Maria Sotomayor’s ancestors trace to the 1800s in Puerto Rico, when Spain controlled the island. That ended in 1898 (after the Spanish-American War) and the island became a US territory. Then in 1917, under the Jones Act, all persons born in Puerto Rico became US citizens. (People on the island, however, still lack the full privileges of statehood and are unable to vote in presidential elections.)
“My family’s shifting fortunes followed the island’s economic currents: coffee plantations sold off piecemeal until yesterday’s landowners took to laboring in cane fields that belonged to someone else,” Sotomayor wrote in her 2013 memoir.
She added: “We moved from mountainside farms to small towns like San Germán, Lajas, Manatí, Arecibo, Barceloneta; and after a time, on to what were then the slums of Santurce in San Juan; from there the mainland beckoned…..”
Her parents were part of the first wave of Puerto Rican migration to New York in the 1940s. Her mother, Celina Baez, who’d been born near the town of Lajas, left the island when she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps. She shipped out first to Georgia and then was assigned to the Army’s Port of Embarkation in New York. Her father, Juan Sotomayor, also migrated during World War II to the city.
The couple eventually settled with their daughter, and a younger son, in the Bronx. Sotomayor has called herself a “proud Nuyorican.”
In 2024, as part of a Library of America Latino poetry event, the justice described a verse that was sung at family parties: [“En Mi Viejo San Juan” (In my old San Juan)] by Noel Estrada. “This poem is like the national anthem for all Puerto Ricans who live outside Puerto Rico,” she said.
In a similar manner, Elena Kagan’s Jewish family identity is woven with her American associations. Three of her four grandparents were immigrants, arriving in the US in the early 1900s; the fourth (her father’s mother) was born here of newly immigrant parents. They were all Russian Jews, tracing to lands now part of Ukraine.
Her mother, the former Gloria Gettelman, grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household. After learning English in school and eventually going to Penn State for college and Columbia for a master’s in education, she taught for a quarter century at Hunter College High School.
Her father, Robert Kagan, also went to Penn State, then earned a law degree at Yale. The couple settled in Manhattan, where the future justice was raised. Kagan, who has two brothers, was the first girl to participate in a “bat Torah” at the Orthodox synagogue near her Upper West Side home. “It was the great Jewish experience of my youth,” she has said.
Kagan sometimes wields Yiddish phrases in her opinions and statements from the bench. In a 2023 securities dispute, when a lawyer told the justices, “Well, it’s settled only to the extent no one’s brought it up and forced this issue since (the case of) Atlas Roofing …,” Kagan rejoined, “Nobody has had the, you know, chutzpah – to quote my people – to bring it up since Atlas Roofing….”
The newer justices on the Supreme Court happen to come from families whose foreign-land roots are further behind them.
Neil McGill Gorsuch’s ancestral line goes back centuries in the US. His paternal side, the Gorsuch line, had origins in England and Germany. His mother, the former Anne McGill, was of Irish stock and her people also came to America several generations earlier. The families moved west and eventually settled in Denver, Colorado.
“My story has its roots in the American West and is the product of the people there,” Justice Gorsuch wrote in a 2019 book. “I grew up a short bike ride away from my grandparents, who did as much to shape me as anyone. My paternal grandfather, John, grew up in Denver when it was a small cow town. … My maternal grandfather, Joe, grew up on the wrong side of town, in a poor Irish and Italian neighborhood….”
John Gorsuch, and his son, David, who would become father to the justice, were both lawyers, as was the justice’s mother Anne. (They had three children.) Anne Gorsuch had the distinction of preceding son Neil to power in Washington, becoming head of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1981.
Gorsuch’s wife, Louise, was born and raised in England, and the justice has written about introducing her to the West that is so close to his heart, including “the proud traditions and sad history of the Native American tribes in New Mexico and Oklahoma.”
Brett Michael Kavanaugh has Irish ancestors on both sides of the family.
Kavanaugh’s great-grandfather on his paternal side, Patrick Kavanaugh, came to the US in the late 1800s and settled in Connecticut. One of his sons, Everett, had a son, also given the name of Everett, who married Martha Murphy, whose roots were also predominantly Irish.
Martha’s parents, Tom and Rose Marie Murphy, lived first in New Jersey. After Tom served in World War II in the Pacific, the family moved to Washington, DC; they had five children, Martha the oldest. Everett and Martha would become lawyers as they raised their only son Brett. “When people ask what it is like to be an only child,” Kavanaugh has said, “I say it depends on who your parents are. I was lucky.”
The family still identifies strongly with the home country, and the justice’s father, Everett, gained dual citizenship.
Last year on St. Patrick’s Day, Justice Kavanaugh attended a celebration hosted at Vice President JD Vance’s home with the Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.
Amy Vivian Coney Barrett, who was born and raised in New Orleans, has Irish and French roots that go back many generations in America. Her parents, Michael Coney and the former Linda Vath, had seven children, beginning with daughter Amy.
Unlike other justices who’ve written recent books, Barrett has only lightly sketched in any forebears. She admiringly mentioned one set of grandparents who exchanged letters during World War II when the grandfather was in the US naval service. Her New Orleans heritage largely defines the justice, who has referred to its spicy cuisine and the weekslong Mardi Gras traditions.
“I’m the oldest of seven children. I now have seven children of my own, kind of replicating my parents’ life. I’m also the oldest of 29 grandchildren,” she said at a Library of Congress appearance in March, as she described setting up benches for the children in her extended family to watch the floats and catch the strings of beads thrown.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest justice bears her heritage overtly. Her given name, Ketanji Onyika, is African. She said it means “Lovely One.” Raised in Miami, Jackson has one younger brother. Her parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, were educators, and her father also became a lawyer.
In her 2024 memoir, Jackson wrote that she’d heard family stories “that forebears had been brought from Africa chained in the holds of ships, and had been held in bondage for centuries, toiling on antebellum plantations in Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina.”
She said that her ancestors were easier to trace in the post-Civil War period, when Black names began appearing in the Freedmen’s Bureau and census records.
Jackson wrote: “Only then would the roots of my family tree – the Browns, Rosses, Greenes, Andersons, Rutherfords, Mayweathers, Armsteads, and others known by variations of these names – finally be inscribed in the ledger of American life.”