Obama has nominated two associate justices to the U.S. Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and on a federal district court in New York, became the nation’s first Latino justice in Court history. The Senate confirmed her by a vote of sixty-eight to thirty-one.

Kagan, formerly Obama’s solicitor general, became the fourth woman in Supreme Court history, following after Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sotomayor. The Senate confirmed her by a vote of sixty-three to thirty-seven.