 Some historians contend that Cardozo — a Sephardic Jew believed to be of distant Portuguese descent — should also be counted as the first Hispanic Justice . Schmidhauser wrote in 1979 that " [ a ] mong the large ethnic groupings of European origin which have never been represented upon the Supreme Court are the Italians , Southern Slavs , and Hispanic Americans . " The National Hispanic Center for Advanced Studies and Policy Analysis wrote in 1982 that the Supreme Court " has never had an Hispanic Justice " , and the Hispanic American Almanac similarly reported in 1996 that " no Hispanic has yet sat on the U.S. Supreme Court " . However , Segal and Spaeth state : " Though it is often claimed that no Hispanics have served on the Court , it is not clear why Benjamin Cardozo , a Sephardic Jew of Spanish heritage , should not count . " They identify a number of other sources that present conflicting views as to Cardozo 's ethnicity , with one simply labeling him " Iberian . " In 2007 , the Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History also listed Cardozo as " the first Hispanic named to the Supreme Court of the United States . " 
