IT’S ONE time when three’s not a crowd.

The old saying of “Two’s company; three’s a crowd” actually doesn’t apply to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the addition of Elena Kagan to the high court marks the first time in history that three women will be justices. They’re still not a crowd as only one third of the court will be women.

Justice Ruth Badar Ginsburg is the woman veteran on the court, having served as a justice for 13 years.

Another female, Sonia Sotomayor, became a justice last year, and Kagan recently was sworn in as a justice.

SANDRA Day O’Connor was a pioneer as she was the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice.

O’Connor’s appointment by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 meant the high court couldn’t be referred to as “nine old men” if anyone was inclined to do so as some people did several decades previously.

That term surfaced in the mid-1930s when the Supreme Court at that time wasn’t in favor of many New Deal efforts. At that time, what is called President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “court-packing” plan of 1937 brought attention to the elderly justices, and Roosevelt was quite willing for the court to be known as “the nine old men.” That was the title of a book published in 1936 by journalists Drew Pearson and Robert Allen.

When O’Connor later was named to the National Women’s Hall of Fame, information about her on the Web site notes that her appointment as a justice broke the ultimate “glass ceiling” in the legal profession.

Retired since 2005, O’Connor was considered a key figure in court decisions related to abortion.

NOW, with three women ready to serve as justices, it still might not make much difference in the outcome of cases as justices tend to vote along ideological lines.

However, academic studies have pointed out that in just one area, sex discrimination lawsuits, the presence of a woman as a federal appeals judge appears to make a difference.

Ginsburg has indicated women are more likely to add a measure of civility to the court’s work.

Time will tell.