The history of the United States Supreme Court runs from a six-member bench that first met in a New York exchange building in 1790 to the nine-justice institution that today decides questions on guns, abortion, elections, and executive power. Article III of the Constitution created the court in broad strokes, granting it “the judicial Power of the United States” and leaving Congress to fill in the size, structure, and procedures.1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Article III That open-ended design is why the court’s story is one of steady reinvention, shaped as much by politics and national crisis as by legal reasoning.
Founding the Court: 1789 and Its First Decade
Article III says almost nothing about how the court should operate. It guarantees federal judges hold office “during good Behaviour,” which in practice means life tenure, and it lists the kinds of cases the court can hear.1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Article III The rest fell to the First Congress. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created a six-member Supreme Court with one chief justice and five associate justices, divided the country into thirteen judicial districts, and grouped those districts into three regional circuits.2The Avalon Project. 1 Stat 73 – An Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States
The same law required justices to “ride circuit,” traveling to each region twice a year to sit as trial and appellate judges alongside local district judges. On unpaved roads and horse-drawn coaches, that meant months of travel every year. The court held its first session on February 1, 1790, at the Royal Exchange Building on Broad Street in New York City, then the national capital. There were almost no cases. The early justices spent their time on administrative matters and circuit riding rather than constitutional interpretation. When the capital moved to Philadelphia in 1791, the court relocated with it to Old City Hall, where it sat until 1800.3National Park Service. Old City Hall – Independence National Historical Park
How Many Justices: A Number That Kept Moving
The Constitution never sets the size of the court. That choice belongs to Congress, and Congress changed its mind repeatedly for eighty years. The Judiciary Act of 1801, passed by the outgoing Federalist majority, eliminated one seat to keep the incoming Jefferson administration from filling a vacancy.4U.S. Capitol – Visitor Center. Judiciary Act of 1801 Jefferson’s allies repealed that law in 1802, restoring six seats. Then, as the country expanded westward and new circuits were needed, Congress added justices. A seventh seat came in 1807 with the creation of the Seventh Circuit for Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.5Federal Judicial Center. Seventh Circuit Two more seats followed in 1837, bringing the total to nine.6Constitution Annotated. ArtIII.S1.8.3 Supreme Court and Congress
The court hit its peak of ten during the Civil War in 1863, when Congress added a tenth seat with the new Tenth Circuit.6Constitution Annotated. ArtIII.S1.8.3 Supreme Court and Congress After the war, Congress went the other direction. The Judicial Circuits Act of 1866 authorized a gradual reduction toward seven seats as justices retired, partly to keep President Andrew Johnson from making appointments.7U.S. Capitol – Visitor Center. HR 334 – An Act to Fix the Number of Judges of the Supreme Court That reduction never fully happened. In 1869, under President Grant, Congress set the number at nine, and it has stayed there. Federal law still reads: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices.”8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1 – Number of Justices; Quorum
Roosevelt’s Court-Packing Plan
The most serious modern attempt to change the number came in 1937. President Franklin Roosevelt, frustrated that the court kept striking down New Deal programs, proposed the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill. It would have allowed the president to appoint one additional justice for every sitting justice over 70, potentially expanding the bench to fifteen.9Federal Judicial Center. FDR’s Court-Packing Plan Roosevelt had just won reelection in a landslide, but the plan drew opposition from both parties. The Senate Judiciary Committee sent a negative recommendation, and the full Senate tabled the bill by July 1937. During the debate, Justice Owen Roberts shifted his vote to uphold a Washington state minimum wage law in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, a move widely called “the switch in time that saved nine.”10Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. West Coast Hotel Co v Parrish – 300 US 379 (1937)
Marbury and the Marshall Court
For its first decade the court operated in the shadow of Congress and the presidency. That changed when John Adams appointed John Marshall as chief justice in 1801. Marshall served 34 years and, more than any other individual, turned the court into a co-equal branch of government.
The turning point was Marbury v. Madison in 1803. The case came out of a mundane dispute over undelivered judicial commissions, but Marshall used it to establish judicial review: the court’s power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. His opinion declared that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is,” and that any statute conflicting with the Constitution “is void.”11Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Marbury v Madison – 5 US 137 (1803) Marshall found that a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 had improperly expanded the court’s original jurisdiction beyond what Article III allowed, and he invalidated it. No previous ruling had claimed that authority so plainly. The precedent became the foundation for every constitutional challenge that followed.
How Justices Get to the Bench
The Constitution splits the appointment power. Article II lets the president nominate justices, and no nominee takes a seat without Senate confirmation.12Constitution Annotated. Article II Section 2 Clause 2 – Advice and Consent The framers wanted the two elected branches to agree on every appointment so that no single person could stack the judiciary.
In practice the confirmation process has run from routine to explosive. George Washington’s nominee John Rutledge was rejected for chief justice in 1795 after he publicly criticized a treaty, the first failed nominee in the court’s history. President John Tyler had five nominees rejected or withdrawn in a fifteen-month span in the 1840s. In modern times, the Senate rejected Robert Bork in 1987 by 58 to 42 after contentious hearings over his judicial philosophy, and confirmed Clarence Thomas in 1991 by 52 to 48, the narrowest margin in the court’s history, following sexual harassment allegations. Because justices serve for life, every nomination fight carries stakes that stretch decades past the president who made the pick.
The Eras of the Court
The court’s history breaks into distinct eras, each shaped by the dominant legal philosophy of its chief justice and the national crises of the time. The same constitutional text has been read very differently depending on who sat on the bench.
The Taney Court and Slavery
After Marshall’s death in 1835, Chief Justice Roger Taney moved the court toward a stricter view of state power and a narrower reading of federal authority. The defining case was Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, which ruled that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and could not claim any protection from federal courts.13National Archives. Dred Scott v Sandford (1857) It is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in the court’s history. Rather than settling the national debate over slavery, it inflamed it, and the ruling was effectively nullified by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments after the Civil War.14Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Dred Scott v Sandford – 60 US 393 (1856)
The Lochner Era
From the late 1800s through the mid-1930s, the court used the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause to strike down economic regulations. The era takes its name from Lochner v. New York, a 1905 decision that invalidated a New York law limiting bakery employees to sixty hours of work per week. The court held that the law was “an unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract.”15Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lochner v New York – 198 US 45 (1905) Under that philosophy the court repeatedly struck down minimum wage laws, workplace safety rules, and child labor restrictions.
The Lochner era collapsed in 1937 with West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, when the court upheld Washington’s minimum wage law and overruled its earlier precedent.10Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. West Coast Hotel Co v Parrish – 300 US 379 (1937) After that the court took a far more deferential posture toward economic regulation and turned its attention to individual rights.
The Warren Court and Civil Rights
No era reshaped American daily life more dramatically than the Warren Court, which ran from 1953 to 1969 under Chief Justice Earl Warren. In Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the court unanimously declared that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine that had stood since 1896.16National Archives. Brown v Board of Education (1954) The decision did not end segregation overnight, but it gave the civil rights movement its most powerful legal weapon.
The Warren Court also changed criminal procedure. In Miranda v. Arizona in 1966, the court held that police must inform suspects of their right to remain silent and their right to an attorney before any custodial interrogation begins.17Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Miranda v Arizona – 384 US 436 (1966) The era also expanded voting rights, established a right to privacy, and required states to provide lawyers for defendants who could not afford them.
The Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts
The courts that followed the Warren era pulled back from some of its broadest mandates and extended others in unexpected directions. The Burger Court (1969–1986) recognized a constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade and narrowed some criminal procedure protections. The Rehnquist Court (1986–2005) emphasized federalism and states’ rights, placing new limits on Congress’s power to regulate under the Commerce Clause.
The Roberts Court, which began in 2005, has produced some of the most consequential rulings of the modern era. In District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, the court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own firearms for personal self-defense, independent of militia service.18Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. District of Columbia v Heller – 554 US 570 (2008) Two years later, Citizens United v. FEC struck down restrictions on independent political spending by corporations and unions, holding that such limits violated the First Amendment.19Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Citizens United v FEC – 558 US 310 (2010)
In 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges required all states to license and recognize same-sex marriages under the Fourteenth Amendment.20Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Obergefell v Hodges – 576 US 644 (2015) In 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overruled Roe v. Wade, holding that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion and returning the question to state legislatures.21Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Dobbs v Jackson Womens Health Organization – 597 US (2022) The same court issuing both Obergefell and Dobbs within seven years captures something essential about the institution. Its direction depends heavily on who sits on it, and a handful of retirements or appointments can shift its trajectory for a generation.
A Home of Its Own
The court spent its first 145 years as a tenant in other institutions’ buildings. After New York and Philadelphia, it moved to Washington in 1800 and was assigned various rooms inside the U.S. Capitol, working in the Old Senate Chamber, in basement rooms, and in other borrowed spaces. Chief Justice William Howard Taft, appointed in 1921 after serving as the nation’s 27th president, began lobbying Congress for a dedicated courthouse almost immediately and asked architect Cass Gilbert to sketch plans.22Architect of the Capitol. Supreme Court Building
Construction began in 1932. The building was completed in 1935 in a Corinthian neoclassical style meant to harmonize with the nearby Capitol, using Vermont marble for the exterior and Alabama marble for the interior corridors.23Supreme Court of the United States. Building History Taft died in 1930 and never saw the finished building, but no one did more to give the court a physical identity separate from Congress.