"The Supremes" is the seventeenth episode of the fifth season of American serial political drama television series The West Wing. It originally aired on NBC on March 24, 2004. In "The Supremes", the White House senior staff, under Democratic President Josiah Bartlet, looks to nominate a judge to the Supreme Court of the United States when Josh comes up with a plan to, instead of nominating a centrist to the seat, nominate one liberal and one conservative candidate to two seats on the Court. The episode was met with mixed reception, although it was later noted the show bore similarities to the 2016 death and replacement of real-life Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
The story in "The Supremes" begins at the end of the previous episode, entitled "Eppur Si Muove", after Josh Lyman's attempt to pack the United States circuit courts ends with news of the death of Owen Brady, a fifty-two year old Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. In the current episode, the White House senior staff works to find a replacement for Brady, taking interviews with judges who are considered potential nominees to fill the seat. Josh and Toby Ziegler take a meeting with Evelyn Baker Lang, a liberal U.S. circuit court judge, although Lang is not seriously considered as a potential candidate. Instead, Lang is brought in as a diversion, with Josh and Toby hoping that when rumors spread that the White House is considering Lang, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which is controlled by the Republican Party and has the power to block judicial nominees, will be frightened into easily passing a more moderate candidate.
However, Josh is impressed by his meeting with Lang, in which she correctly deduces the meeting's role as a political tactic and demonstrates in-depth knowledge of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Josh wants to put Lang on the court, but after she tells him and Toby that she had a legal abortion in law school, the senior staff argues that nominating her for the seat would be harmful to both her and the White House's public image. President Bartlet insists that Lang's name be put on the shortlist anyway, although he agrees with Leo McGarry that the probable nominee is going to be E. Bradford Shelton, a moderate. Shelton is brought into the White House to meet the President, where he tells the President that "I don't position myself on issues... my allegiance to the eccentricities of a case will reliably outweigh any position you might wish I held," confirming that he would not consistently vote with the incumbent Chief Justice of the United States, liberal Roy Ashland.
Donna Moss, talking to Josh in her cubicle, shows Josh a tin of cookies given to her by her parents, with a picture of her parents' two cats taped to the top. She explains that when her parents went looking to buy a cat, they disagreed on which cat to buy, leading each parent to buy the one they like and live together with both cats. Josh, inspired by the story, proposes a strategy to Toby; Lang will be nominated to be the first female Chief Justice, in exchange for offering the Senate Judiciary Committee the opportunity to select a conservative to fill Brady's seat. Toby disagrees, but when Josh goes to tell his idea to the President, Toby follows him, leading to an argument between the two outside the Oval Office. While Toby argues that the White House might have the opportunity to nominate someone else to the Chief Justice's position, letting the White House select both candidates, Josh reminds him that both candidates would then be moderates. Toby responds that moderate justices are more deliberate and less eager for attention, but Josh argues that "if we had a bench full of moderates in '54, separate but equal would still be on the books, this place would still have two sets of drinking fountains".