When this case came around Marshall was an experienced Supreme Court advocate, having already presented many cases before them. He won 29 out of the 32 cases that he argued before the Supreme Court. He presented each of his cases in his landmark style of being straightforward and plainspoken. When asked by Justice Frankfurter for his definition of "equal", Thurgood replied " Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place." In 1961 Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. It was anything but an easy confirmation. A group of Southern senators held up his confirmation, and he served initially under a special appointment made during a congressional recess. He wrote 112 opinions on that court; none overturned on appeal, in the four years that he was there. Several of his dissenting opinions were adapted as majority opinions by the Supreme Court. President Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967.
On the court, Thurgood said little during argument session, except to train his sarcasm on counsel struggling through their arguments or sometimes on a fellow justice. He showed by his record of writing strong opinions, that his strength was not to talk but to express his thoughts on paper. During a death penalty argument, Justice Rhenquist suggested that an inmate's repeated appeals had cost the state to much money. Marshall replied, "It would have been much cheaper to shoot right after he was arrested, wouldn't it?" This shows that Marshall felt that everyone deserved a fair chance, and the right to life.
Thurgood Marshall is often remembered for his dissents, not his concurring opinions. One of his best known dissent is his 63 page opinion in San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez. The court held, 5-4, that the constitution's guarantee of equal protection was not violated by the property tax system used in Texas and most other states to finance public education.
