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Antonin Gregory Scalia born March 11, 1936) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice currently on the Court, Scalia is the Senior Associate Justice. Appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia has been described as the intellectual anchor of the Court's conservative wing. Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and attended public grade school and Catholic high school in New York City, where his family had moved. He attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate and obtained his Bachelor of Laws degree from Harvard Law School. In 1986, Scalia was appointed by Reagan to the Supreme Court to fill the associate justice seat vacated when Justice William Rehnquist was elevated to Chief Justice.

Scalia describes himself as an originalist, meaning that he interprets the Constitution of the United States as it would have been understood when it was adopted. According to Scalia, "It's what did the words mean to the people who ratified the Bill of Rights or who ratified the Constitution." Constitutional amendments, such as the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment, according to Scalia, are to be interpreted based on their meaning at the time of ratification. Scalia is often asked how this approach justifies the result in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, which held that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and which relied on the Fourteenth Amendment for the result. Scalia is a textualist in statutory interpretation, believing that the ordinary meaning of the statute should govern.

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court. Thomas grew up in Savannah, Georgia and was educated at the College of the Holy Cross and at Yale Law School. In 1974, he was appointed an Assistant Attorney General in Missouri and subsequently practiced