Six Justices Were Foreign-Born, and So Is Canadian-Born Granholm
If Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm is nominated and confirmed to become a Supreme Court justice, she would be the seventh member of the court who wasn’t born in the United States.
Granholm was born in British Columbia, the National Law Journal reports. She moved with her family to California at the age of 4 and became a citizen in 1980.
The last foreign-born justice was Felix Frankfurter, born in Austria in 1881, according to the story. He came to New York with his family at the age of 12, not knowing a word of English. Those who opposed him did so because he was liberal or Jewish and did not make an issue of his birthplace, Supreme Court historian Mel Urofsky told the NLJ. “He was very gung-ho about America,” Urofsky said of Frankfurter.
Five other justices were foreign-born, according to the NLJ. They are James Wilson (born in Scotland in 1742), James Iredell (1751, England), William Paterson (1745, Ireland), David Brewer (1837, Asia Minor, now Turkey), and George Sutherland (1862, England).
