Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States · CC BY-SA 3.0

Became the first woman to serve as U.S. Solicitor General in 2009, arguing the government's cases before the Supreme Court, and the following year Barack Obama nominated her to that same court — making her the fourth woman ever to sit on it. Before that she was the first female dean of Harvard Law School. On the bench she has written landmark majority opinions, including in Kisor v. Wilkie and Chiafalo v. Washington, while becoming an increasingly pointed dissenting voice as the Court's conservative majority solidified.