Given the serious events and arguments of the March sitting, we thought it might be good to provide you with a somewhat lighter closer look. And few topics could be better than justices’ … pets.
Accounts of presidents’ pets are quite colorful. Along with being the only person to serve as both chief justice and president, William Howard Taft was, you might recall, the last president to keep a cow (indeed, the “Queen of Capital Cows”) on the White House lawn. President Woodrow Wilson, for his part, had the tobacco-chewing ram Old Ike as part of his presidential flock – he kept the sheep to trim the White House grounds, and auctioned their fleeces, in order to cut down on costs during World War I. And who could forget President Benjamin Harrison’s two opossums, Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection?
But the pets of previous and current justices – unlike presidential pets, who boast both a dedicated museum and pages of archives – are harder to track down (when you do a quick Google search, what comes up is John Oliver’s 2014 “Supreme Court Dogs” skit, which has been viewed almost 6 million times and by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s assessment was “hilarious”).
There are a few standouts across the recent bench, however.
Justice Samuel Alito would bring his late springer spaniel, Zeus, to chambers. Zeus made headlines after Alito gave a Wall Street Journal interview saying that, “Late at night when I was thinking about cases I would test out my ideas with Zeus. He generally agreed with me.” When he was stuck on a case, Alito said he would ask for Zeus’s input: “I put the red [respondent’s] brief over here and the blue [petitioner’s] brief over there, equal distance from Zeus, and I’d put a few dog treats on both. Then I would let Zeus go. If he went to blue brief, then we would reverse,” Alito said.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor had perhaps the most animal-filled background of any justice in recent memory, given that she grew up on a cattle ranch. There, the young O’Connor attempted to bring a bobcat, tortoise, and other animals from the Arizona ranch into the family home. Her mother did not want any pets in the house, and O’Connor recalled that “in each instance I did eventually realize that these were wild animals and they were better off where they came from. But that took a little learning.” O’Connor also took in a stray dog named Susie, which was eventually allowed inside.
Denver native Justice Neil Gorsuch followed in O’Connor’s footsteps (or hoof tracks, if you will), by owning a Colorado home that hosted horses, chickens, rabbits, and a goat. He sold the property in 2017, with the listing calling it a “horse lover’s paradise.” In Gorsuch’s opening statement as a Supreme Court nominee, he included a shoutout to his “teenage daughters watching out West [b]athing chickens for the county fair [and] [d]evising ways to keep our determined pet goat out of the garden.” And one of his wife’s favorite activities when they lived in Boulder was “running in the open space” with their pet dogs.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett reported in her 2020 confirmation hearing that the Barrett house has a “very fluffy chinchilla.” The other justices either do not have pets, or if they do, information about the pets is not readily accessible online (although we do know that one justice, Justice Elena Kagan, reportedly “doesn’t care for pets”). If you have any additional information on the justices and their furry friends, feel free to shoot us an email.