100 Fun Facts About Supreme Court

How many justices have sat on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1869?

The number has changed six times; the Judiciary Act of 1869 fixed it at nine.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 originally set the Supreme Court at how many justices?

President Washington signed it on 24 September 1789, creating one chief justice and five associates.

Who was the first Chief Justice of the United States?

He left the court in 1795 to become governor of New York, a job he apparently found more appealing.

Where did the Supreme Court hold its first session, in February 1790?

It met at the Royal Exchange, since New York was then the national capital.

Which 1803 case established judicial review, letting courts strike down unconstitutional laws?

The dispute began with a batch of 'midnight' justice-of-the-peace commissions John Adams signed two days before leaving office.

Who is the longest-serving chief justice in U.S. history, holding the post from 1801 to 1835?

He was serving as John Adams's secretary of state when he was appointed.

Which justice is the only one ever to have been impeached by the House of Representatives?

The Senate acquitted him in 1805 and he stayed on the bench, a result that helped cement judicial independence.

The 1857 Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, held what?

The 7-2 ruling is widely regarded as the worst decision in the court's history and helped push the country toward civil war.

The 1896 'separate but equal' case involved a man who boarded a whites-only what?

Homer Plessy deliberately broke Louisiana's Separate Car Act to create a test case, and lost 7-1.

Which justice set the record for longest service on the court, sitting from 1939 to 1975?

He was confirmed at 40, one of the youngest ever, which is how he managed more than 36 years.

Which justice retired from the court at the age of 90, the oldest ever to serve?

He had been wounded three times fighting for the Union in the Civil War before he ever studied law.

Who nominated Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice, in 1916?

The confirmation fight lasted four months, then a record for a Supreme Court nominee.

Who is the only person to have served both as President of the United States and as Chief Justice?

He said the court job was the one he had always wanted, and lobbied for the court to get its own building.

The Supreme Court did not get its own building until which year, having met in the Capitol before that?

Chief Justice Taft pushed the project through Congress but died before it was finished.

Which architect, a friend of Taft, designed the Supreme Court Building?

It was his last major work; he died before completion and his son finished it, slightly under the $9.74 million budget.

What four-word motto is carved above the west entrance of the Supreme Court Building?

The east side carries a different motto, 'Justice, the Guardian of Liberty'.

The gym on the top floor of the justices' building includes a basketball floor with what nickname?

A sign by the door bans playing basketball while the real court is in session, since it sits directly above the courtroom.

FDR's 1937 'court-packing' plan would have added a justice for every sitting member over what age?

The plan capped the additions at six and died in Congress, but the court soon began upholding New Deal laws anyway.

The 1944 case upholding the wartime exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast bears whose name?

The 23-year-old had refused to leave the exclusion zone; his conviction was finally vacated in 1983.

Before Eisenhower made him chief justice in 1953, Earl Warren had been governor of which state?

He is the only Californian governor elected to three consecutive terms, and later chaired the commission on the Kennedy assassination.

The 1954 ruling that ended legal school segregation concerned a school district where?

The vote was unanimous; Justice Reed, the last holdout, reportedly wept as the opinion was read.

How many of his 32 Supreme Court civil rights cases did Thurgood Marshall win as an NAACP lawyer?

The run included Brown v. Board of Education; he joined the court himself in 1967 as its first African American justice.

Which justice, appointed in 1962, had been an NFL halfback for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Detroit Lions?

'Whizzer' White was runner-up for the 1937 Heisman Trophy and played for Detroit while enrolled at Yale Law School.

The 1963 case guaranteeing poor defendants a lawyer began with a petition written how?

Clarence Earl Gideon used the prison library to draft his appeal, and the court ruled unanimously in his favour.

Under New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), officials suing for defamation must prove what?

The plaintiff must show the publisher knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was.

In which city was Ernesto Miranda, whose 1966 case created the 'right to remain silent' warning, arrested?

The 5-4 opinion was written by Chief Justice Warren, who borrowed the wording from the FBI's own procedures.

The 1967 case striking down interracial marriage bans bore the couple's surname. What was it?

Richard and Mildred Loving had been convicted under Virginia's Racial Integrity Act; the ruling was unanimous.

In the 1969 Tinker case, students won the right to wear what to school in protest at the Vietnam War?

The court said students do not 'shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate'.

In United States v. Nixon (1974), the court unanimously ordered the president to hand over what?

Nixon resigned sixteen days after the ruling.

Who nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the court, in 1981?

The Senate confirmed her unanimously; she later signed letters 'FWOTSC', First Woman on the Supreme Court.

Which president is the only one to serve a full elected term without getting to appoint a single justice?

By contrast, four presidents each appointed a chief justice and several associates in a single term.

In 1987 the Senate rejected Robert Bork's nomination by what vote?

It remains the most recent nomination voted down by the Senate, and gave the language the verb 'to bork'.

Clarence Thomas joined the court in 1991 to succeed which justice?

Born in Pin Point, Georgia, he became the second African American justice and is now the court's longest-serving member.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated in 1993 to replace which retiring justice?

She was the second woman and the first Jewish woman on the court, and was seen at the time as a moderate consensus-builder.

Bush v. Gore, decided on 12 December 2000, halted a recount in which state?

The state's own supreme court had ordered a recount of more than 61,000 'undervotes' the machines had missed.

John Roberts became chief justice in 2005 after which chief justice died in office?

Roberts had first been nominated to replace Sandra Day O'Connor as an associate justice, then switched to the top job.

Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice, grew up in which New York borough?

The daughter of Puerto Rican parents, she graduated from Princeton with high honours and edited the Yale Law Journal.

The 2010 Citizens United case began with a group's attempt to air a film critical of which politician?

The 5-4 ruling held that limits on independent political spending by corporations and unions violate the First Amendment.

The 2015 Obergefell ruling that same-sex couples have a right to marry was decided by what margin?

It required all 50 states, D.C. and the territories to perform and recognise the marriages.

Merrick Garland's 2016 nomination never got a hearing. Whose death had created the vacancy?

Senate leader Mitch McConnell announced within hours of the death that he would treat any nomination that year as null and void.

Ketanji Brown Jackson took the seat of which justice, for whom she had once clerked?

She is the first Black woman and the first former federal public defender on the court.

The 2022 Dobbs decision held that the Constitution does not confer a right to what?

It overruled both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).

The Supreme Court grants about 80 petitions a year out of roughly how many received?

Under the 'rule of four', it takes only four of the nine justices to agree to hear a case.

By custom, who answers the door and serves the drinks during the nine members' private conferences?

No clerks or staff are allowed in the room, so the newest member handles the chores.

A Supreme Court term traditionally begins on which day?

The term then runs until late June or early July, when the biggest opinions tend to land.

The Constitution says justices hold office 'during good behavior', which in practice means what?

The only way to remove one is impeachment by Congress, which has been tried exactly once.

In which year was the size of the Supreme Court last changed, fixing it at nine justices?

President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Judiciary Act of 1869; FDR's later attempt to expand the bench went nowhere.

Of the nine justices sitting in 2025, who alone did not attend an Ivy League law school?

She earned her law degree at Notre Dame; the other eight justices of 2025 went to Harvard or Yale.

Of the justices sitting in 2025, who alone had never served as a judge before joining?

Kagan came to the bench from the post of Solicitor General in 2010.

Who was the first Supreme Court nominee to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in 1925?

He went to quell concerns about his Wall Street links; routine questioning of nominees only began with John Marshall Harlan II in 1955.

Which fruit did the Supreme Court rule was legally a vegetable in Nix v. Hedden, an 1893 tariff dispute?

Tomato importers had sued a port customs collector to recover duties, arguing that botany was on their side. The justices unanimously ruled that everyday speech, not science, decides what a vegetable is.

Which heavyweight boxing champion had his draft-evasion conviction overturned 8–0 by the Supreme Court in 1971?

Muhammad Ali had refused induction into the military in 1967 after his draft board rejected his claim to be a conscientious objector. The justices found the appeal board had never explained its refusal.

In PGA Tour v. Martin, the Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use what in tournaments?

A golf cart was an accommodation the tour owed Martin under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the court held 7–2. A circulatory condition impaired his ability to walk a course.

How did the Supreme Court hear oral arguments for the first time in May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic?

By telephone, with all nine justices and the lawyers dialling in remotely, the court also let the public listen live for the first time. About a dozen postponed cases were heard that way.

Which souvenir do lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court traditionally take home from the counsel tables?

A goose-quill pen is the keepsake: twenty are laid out on the counsel tables each day the court sits, a custom that dates to its earliest sessions.

Which ritual did Chief Justice Melville Fuller start among Supreme Court justices as a daily reminder of harmony?

Shaking hands with each of the other eight is how every justice begins a sitting. Fuller wanted a reminder that differences of opinion did not rule out a shared purpose.

While leading the Supreme Court, Earl Warren also chaired the commission that investigated which national tragedy?

John F. Kennedy's assassination was investigated by the Warren Commission, which reported in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted entirely alone. President Lyndon Johnson set it up a week after the shooting.

Justice Robert H. Jackson took leave from the Supreme Court in 1945 to serve as chief U.S. prosecutor where?

The Nuremberg trials took Jackson to Germany to prosecute Nazi war criminals, after he helped draft the London Charter that gave the tribunal its legal basis.

In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects which form of protest?

Burning the American flag is protected speech, the court held, after Gregory Lee Johnson set one alight outside the 1984 Republican convention in Dallas. Texas had fined him $2,000 and sentenced him to a year in jail.

Which former president argued before the Supreme Court in 1841 for the Africans who had seized the ship Amistad?

John Quincy Adams, by then a congressman from Massachusetts, spoke for eight and a half hours. The court freed the captives, and the 35 who wished to return reached Sierra Leone in 1842.

Which president appointed the most Supreme Court justices, more even than Franklin D. Roosevelt?

George Washington, as first president, had to build the bench from nothing, so no successor has matched his total. The Senate rejected one of his choices, the recess-appointed chief John Rutledge.

Which official, nicknamed the 'tenth justice', argues the federal government's cases before the Supreme Court?

The Solicitor General keeps an office in the Supreme Court Building as well as at the Justice Department, a sign of how closely the two work. The post was created in 1870.

Groups that are not parties to a Supreme Court case may weigh in by filing which kind of brief?

Amicus curiae is Latin for friend of the court. States often file such briefs when a ruling is likely to affect their own laws or interests.

A losing party who asks the Supreme Court to review a lower court's judgment petitions for a writ of what?

Certiorari, which lawyers shorten to cert, covers cases with no automatic right of appeal, so the justices choose for themselves which disputes they will hear.

Besides leading the Supreme Court, the chief justice must preside over which proceeding in the Senate?

A president's impeachment trial is the only place the Constitution mentions a chief justice at all. The first to preside did so at Andrew Johnson's trial in 1868.

Flood v. Kuhn (1972) left which professional sport exempt from antitrust law, a privilege dating from 1922?

Baseball kept its exemption even though the majority called it an anomaly that Congress, not the courts, should end. Curt Flood had sued after the St. Louis Cardinals traded him against his wishes.

In 1971 the Supreme Court refused to stop newspapers publishing which leaked secret study of the Vietnam War?

The Pentagon Papers were a 47-volume history commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The justices ruled that the government had not justified censoring the press in advance.

The Supreme Court twice overturned convictions of which teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931?

The Scottsboro Boys won new trials in Powell v. Alabama (1932). Three years later the justices reversed the convictions again, because African Americans had been kept off the jury rolls.

Browder v. Gayle (1956) ended segregation on which city's buses, after a boycott sparked by Rosa Parks?

Montgomery had to integrate its buses once the justices affirmed a lower court in November 1956. One plaintiff, Claudette Colvin, had been arrested at 15, nine months before Parks.

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) struck down a ban on keeping which weapons at home for self-defence?

Handguns could not be banned outright, the court held, in its first decision on whether the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep arms rather than a militia's.

Engel v. Vitale (1962) barred public schools from leading students in which daily classroom ritual?

An official prayer, even a neutral one that pupils could sit out, breached the First Amendment's ban on establishing religion. State education officials had written the 22-word text themselves.

Furman v. Georgia (1972) brought which punishment to a nationwide halt until states rewrote their laws?

The death penalty was being imposed so arbitrarily that it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, the court found. The ruling wiped out the sentences of more than 600 condemned prisoners.

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), a dispute over contraceptives, found which unwritten right implied in the Constitution?

Privacy is never named in the Bill of Rights, yet the court voted 7–2 that marriage lies within a protected zone of it. The state law had made using any contraceptive a crime.

In 1952 the Supreme Court ruled that President Truman lacked the power to seize which industry during the Korean War?

Steel mills faced a strike that Truman feared would cripple defence contractors, so he had them run under federal direction. The court said he needed authority from Congress to seize private property.

In 1911 the Supreme Court ordered which petroleum giant to break itself up under the Sherman Antitrust Act?

Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller's conglomerate, was found to have illegally monopolised the industry. Its largest descendants include ExxonMobil and Chevron.

Worcester v. Georgia (1832) struck down a state law barring unlicensed outsiders from which Native nation's land?

Cherokee territory was home to missionary Samuel Worcester, sentenced to four years' hard labour for living there without a licence. He turned down a pardon so that the appeal could go ahead.

Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) let families of which religious community withdraw children from school after eighth grade?

The Amish parents' right to practise their religion outweighed the state's interest in keeping their children in class, the court held. Each father had been fined a nominal five dollars.

From 1791 until the federal capital moved in 1800, the Supreme Court sat in which city's Old City Hall?

Philadelphia had built the hall for its own city government, but it housed the nation's top judges for nine years. Three chief justices presided there before the move to the Potomac.

On the Supreme Court bench the chief justice sits in the centre, with the associate justices placed according to what?

Seniority puts the associate with the most years on the bench at the chief's right and the next at his left, alternating outwards, so the two newest members sit at the far ends.

At Supreme Court oral argument, which colour of lectern light tells a lawyer that the allotted time has run out?

Red signals that the allotted time is used up. A separate warning lamp comes on when a lawyer has five minutes left to argue.

Which word from Anglo-Norman law French does the Marshal of the Supreme Court cry to open each sitting?

Oyez comes from an old French verb for hearing and was a call for silence and attention, a relic of the centuries when English courts did their business in Law French.

By which Supreme Court custom can a minority of the justices vote to grant review of a case?

The rule of four appears in no statute and not even in the court's own published rules. It is pure custom, kept up since Congress gave the justices discretion over which disputes to take.

When the Supreme Court splits evenly with a seat vacant, what happens to the judgment under appeal?

The lower ruling stands, but only for that dispute: an evenly divided bench sets no binding precedent and issues no opinion, just a one-sentence announcement.

The Supreme Court acts as a trial court of first resort mainly for lawsuits between which parties?

Two or more states in dispute are the only parties whose suits no lower federal court may hear. The justices normally appoint a special master to take the evidence for them.

Which tier of the federal judiciary sits directly below the Supreme Court and reviews trial rulings?

The courts of appeals are considered the most powerful benches in the country after the nine justices, since they set precedent for regions that cover millions of people.

Which part of the Constitution creates the Supreme Court and bars cutting a sitting federal judge's salary?

Article III vests the judicial power in a single top bench and leaves it to Congress to create every lower federal court beneath it.

Which Latin doctrine, part of a longer maxim about not disturbing the calm, binds courts to follow precedent?

Stare decisis means to stand by things decided. Following earlier rulings in similar disputes keeps the law consistent and predictable.

In Federalist No. 78, which founder argued that the judiciary would be the least dangerous branch of government?

Hamilton reasoned that judges control neither the sword nor the purse and have only the power of judgment. The essay is the first of six he devoted to the judiciary.

Early Supreme Court justices had to travel the country hearing lower-court cases, a duty known as what?

Riding circuit at first paired two justices with a local district judge to hear cases around their assigned region. Congress cut the duty back in 1891 and abolished it from 1912.

If the chief justice dissents, who picks the colleague who writes the Supreme Court's opinion?

The majority's longest-serving member makes the assignment whenever the chief is on the losing side. Otherwise the choice always belongs to the chief, however long the others have served.

Which Supreme Court justice admitted in a 1937 national radio address to having once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan?

Hugo Black had joined a Birmingham chapter in the early 1920s, before winning a Senate seat for Alabama. On the bench he sided with the unanimous ruling against segregated schools.

Who became the youngest person ever nominated to the Supreme Court when he was chosen in 1811 at the age of 32?

Joseph Story stayed for more than three decades, wrote the Amistad opinion and taught law at Harvard while a sitting justice.

Which justice resigned from the Supreme Court in 1916 to run for president, then returned in 1930 as chief justice?

Charles Evans Hughes narrowly lost that election as the Republican nominee, then served as secretary of state before coming back to lead the bench.

Which justice saw his 1968 promotion to chief justice filibustered, then resigned in 1969 over a financier's payment?

Abe Fortas had accepted $20,000 from Louis Wolfson while Wolfson was being investigated for insider trading. He returned to private practice and at times argued before his old colleagues.

Who was the only Supreme Court justice appointed by President Gerald Ford, serving from 1975 until 2010?

John Paul Stevens was the lone appointment of Ford's presidency. He stayed for more than 34 years and lived to the age of 99.

Whose 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings included testimony from psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford?

Brett Kavanaugh denied her allegation, which dated from their high school years, and after an extra FBI inquiry the Senate confirmed him by 50 votes to 48.

The Senate's 2017 'nuclear option', ending filibusters of Supreme Court nominees, cleared the way for which justice?

Neil Gorsuch was confirmed 54–45 once Republicans changed the rule, with three Democrats joining them. Until then a nominee's opponents could demand 60 votes to end debate.

Who in 1880 became the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court, then twice ran for president?

Belva Lockwood became the first woman admitted to the court's bar in 1879, after Congress passed a law opening it to women. Her presidential runs came in 1884 and 1888.

Which military conqueror is carved among history's great lawgivers on the friezes of the Supreme Court courtroom?

Napoleon Bonaparte stands on the north wall with Justinian, Charlemagne and King John, in a line of lawgivers from the Middle Ages onward. Moses and Confucius are among the ancients opposite.

Which amendment, ratified in 1913, reversed the Supreme Court's 1895 ruling against a federal income tax?

The Sixteenth Amendment lets Congress tax incomes without dividing the burden among the states by population. Congress had first tried an income tax during the Civil War.