Number of Supreme Court Nominees By President - List

Number of Supreme Court Nominees By President - List President Barack Obama successfully chose two members of the U.S. Supreme Court and has a chance to nominate a third before his term ends after 2016. If hes able to push a candidate through what can be a politically charged and sometimes lengthy nomination process, Obama will have chosen a third of the nine-member court. So how rare is that? How many times has a modern president gotten an opportunity to choose three justices? Which presidents have nominated the most Supreme Court justices and had the largest impact on makeup of the highest court in the land? Here are some questions and answers about the number of Supreme Court nominees by president. How did Obama get the chance to nominate three justices? Obama was able to nominate three justices because two members of the Supreme Court retired and a third died in office. The first retirement, that of  Justice David Souter, came a short time after Obama took office in 2009. Obamas chose Sonia Sotomayor, who later become the first Hispanic member and third woman justice to serve on the high court. A year later, in 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens gave up his seat on the court. Obama picked Elena Kagan, a former Harvard Law School dean and solicitor general of the United States who was widely seen as a consensus-building liberal. In February 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly. Is It Rare For a President to Get to Nominate Three Justices? Actually, no. Its not that rare. Since 1869, the year Congress increased the number of justices to nine, 12 of the 24 presidents preceding Obama successfully chose at least three members of the Supreme Court. The most recent president to get three justices on the high court was Ronald Reagan, from 1981 through 1988. In fact, one of those nominees, Justice Anthony Kennedy, was confirmed in a presidential-election year, 1988. So Why Were Obamas 3 Nominees Such a Big Deal? That Obama had the opportunity to nominee three Supreme Court justices was not, in an of itself, the big story. The timing - his final 11 months in office - and the impact his choice would have on setting the ideological course on the court for decades to come made his third nomination such a big news story and, of course, a political battle for the ages. Related Story: What Are Obamas Chances of Replacing Scalia? Which President Has Chosen the Most Supreme Court Justices? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got eight of his nominees on the Supreme Court over the course of just six years in office. The only presidents who have come close are  Dwight Eisenhower, William Taft and  Ulysses Grant, whom each got five nominees on the court. So How Does Obamas 3 Picks Compare to Other Presidents? With three picks for the Supreme Court, Obama is exactly average. The 25 presidents since 1869 have gotten 75 nominees on the high court, meaning the average is three justices per president. So Obama falls right in the middle. Here is a list of presidents and the number of their Supreme Court nominees who made it to the court since 1869. The list is ranked from presidents with the most justices to those with the least. Franklin Roosevelt: 8 Dwight Eisenhower: 5 William Taft: 5 Ulysses Grant: 5 Richard Nixon: 4 Harry Truman: 4 Warren Harding: 4 Benjamin Harrison: 4 Grover Cleveland: 4 Ronald Reagan: 3 Herbert Hoover: 3 Woodrow Wilson: 3 Theodore Roosevelt: 3 Barack Obama: 2* George W. Bush: 2 Bill Clinton: 2 George H.W. Bush: 2 Lyndon Johnson: 2 John F. Kennedy: 2 Chester Arthur: 2 Rutherford Hayes: 2 Gerald Ford: 1 Calvin Coolidge: 1 William McKinley: 1 James Garfield: 1 * Obama has not yet nominated a third justice, and it remains uncertain whether his choice will will confirmation.