Supreme Court Trivia
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This Supreme Court trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and covers the highest court in the land from its first session in a New York exchange building to the present nine. It takes in the landmark cases everyone half-remembers from civics class (Marbury v. Madison, Dred Scott, Plessy, Brown, Gideon, Miranda, Loving, Roe, Nixon, Bush v. Gore, Obergefell, Dobbs), the justices who shaped it (John Jay, John Marshall, Holmes, Brandeis, Warren, Thurgood Marshall, O'Connor, Scalia, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Jackson) and the odd corners: the only justice ever impeached, the chief justice who had already been president, the halfback who made it to the bench, and the basketball court upstairs. Early questions are the ones a good citizen should get (how many justices, who confirms them). Later ones will test a law student: which act set the court at six, what the court-packing plan actually proposed, and how many petitions arrive each year. Use it for a government class, a bar-review study break or a pub quiz politics round. Every answer was checked against a documented source that appears beneath the explanation.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many justices have sat on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1869?
9
The number has changed six times; the Judiciary Act of 1869 fixed it at nine.
Q 02The Judiciary Act of 1789 originally set the Supreme Court at how many justices?
Six
President Washington signed it on 24 September 1789, creating one chief justice and five associates.
Q 03Who was the first Chief Justice of the United States?
John Jay
He left the court in 1795 to become governor of New York, a job he apparently found more appealing.
Q 04Where did the Supreme Court hold its first session, in February 1790?
New York City
It met at the Royal Exchange, since New York was then the national capital.
Q 05Which 1803 case established judicial review, letting courts strike down unconstitutional laws?
Marbury v. Madison
The dispute began with a batch of 'midnight' justice-of-the-peace commissions John Adams signed two days before leaving office.
Q 06Who is the longest-serving chief justice in U.S. history, holding the post from 1801 to 1835?
John Marshall
He was serving as John Adams's secretary of state when he was appointed.
Q 07Which justice is the only one ever to have been impeached by the House of Representatives?
Samuel Chase
The Senate acquitted him in 1805 and he stayed on the bench, a result that helped cement judicial independence.
Q 08The 1857 Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, held what?
Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens
The 7-2 ruling is widely regarded as the worst decision in the court's history and helped push the country toward civil war.
Q 09The 1896 'separate but equal' case involved a man who boarded a whites-only what?
Railroad car
Homer Plessy deliberately broke Louisiana's Separate Car Act to create a test case, and lost 7-1.
Q 10Which justice set the record for longest service on the court, sitting from 1939 to 1975?
William O. Douglas
He was confirmed at 40, one of the youngest ever, which is how he managed more than 36 years.
Q 11Which justice retired from the court at the age of 90, the oldest ever to serve?
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
He had been wounded three times fighting for the Union in the Civil War before he ever studied law.
Q 12Who nominated Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice, in 1916?
Woodrow Wilson
The confirmation fight lasted four months, then a record for a Supreme Court nominee.
Q 13Who is the only person to have served both as President of the United States and as Chief Justice?
William Howard Taft
He said the court job was the one he had always wanted, and lobbied for the court to get its own building.
Q 21The 1954 ruling that ended legal school segregation concerned a school district where?
Topeka, Kansas
The vote was unanimous; Justice Reed, the last holdout, reportedly wept as the opinion was read.
Q 22How many of his 32 Supreme Court civil rights cases did Thurgood Marshall win as an NAACP lawyer?
29
The run included Brown v. Board of Education; he joined the court himself in 1967 as its first African American justice.
Q 23Which justice, appointed in 1962, had been an NFL halfback for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Detroit Lions?
Byron White
'Whizzer' White was runner-up for the 1937 Heisman Trophy and played for Detroit while enrolled at Yale Law School.
Q 14The Supreme Court did not get its own building until which year, having met in the Capitol before that?
1935
Chief Justice Taft pushed the project through Congress but died before it was finished.
Q 15Which architect, a friend of Taft, designed the Supreme Court Building?
Cass Gilbert
It was his last major work; he died before completion and his son finished it, slightly under the $9.74 million budget.
Q 16What four-word motto is carved above the west entrance of the Supreme Court Building?
Equal Justice Under Law
The east side carries a different motto, 'Justice, the Guardian of Liberty'.
Q 17The gym on the top floor of the justices' building includes a basketball floor with what nickname?
The Highest Court in the Land
A sign by the door bans playing basketball while the real court is in session, since it sits directly above the courtroom.
Q 18FDR's 1937 'court-packing' plan would have added a justice for every sitting member over what age?
70
The plan capped the additions at six and died in Congress, but the court soon began upholding New Deal laws anyway.
Q 19The 1944 case upholding the wartime exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast bears whose name?
Fred Korematsu
The 23-year-old had refused to leave the exclusion zone; his conviction was finally vacated in 1983.
Q 20Before Eisenhower made him chief justice in 1953, Earl Warren had been governor of which state?
California
He is the only Californian governor elected to three consecutive terms, and later chaired the commission on the Kennedy assassination.
Q 24The 1963 case guaranteeing poor defendants a lawyer began with a petition written how?
In pencil on prison stationery
Clarence Earl Gideon used the prison library to draft his appeal, and the court ruled unanimously in his favour.
Q 25Under New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), officials suing for defamation must prove what?
Actual malice
The plaintiff must show the publisher knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was.
Q 26In which city was Ernesto Miranda, whose 1966 case created the 'right to remain silent' warning, arrested?
Phoenix
The 5-4 opinion was written by Chief Justice Warren, who borrowed the wording from the FBI's own procedures.
Q 27The 1967 case striking down interracial marriage bans bore the couple's surname. What was it?
Loving
Richard and Mildred Loving had been convicted under Virginia's Racial Integrity Act; the ruling was unanimous.
Q 28In the 1969 Tinker case, students won the right to wear what to school in protest at the Vietnam War?
Black armbands
The court said students do not 'shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate'.
Q 29In United States v. Nixon (1974), the court unanimously ordered the president to hand over what?
Tape recordings
Nixon resigned sixteen days after the ruling.
Q 30Who nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the court, in 1981?
Ronald Reagan
The Senate confirmed her unanimously; she later signed letters 'FWOTSC', First Woman on the Supreme Court.