100 Fun Facts About Supreme Court

Who signed the 1869 law setting nine Supreme Court seats?

Ulysses S. Grant signed the Judiciary Act in April 1869, weeks into his term; only three years earlier Congress had voted to shrink the court to seven seats.

In 1955 the Supreme Court told school districts to desegregate 'with all deliberate' what?

Speed: many Southern districts read the vague phrase as licence to stall for years, until the court ruled in 1969 that segregated school systems must end immediately.

Who was the first Chief Justice of the United States?

John Jay quit in 1795 to become a state governor, and when President Adams offered him the chief justiceship again in 1800 he turned it down.

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

New York City was then the national capital; the court was due to open on 1 February 1790, but too few justices had arrived, so business began a day late.

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

Marbury v. Madison arose from a commission John Adams signed in his last days in office; the court said William Marbury was owed it, but that it had no power to order its delivery.

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

John Marshall was John Adams's secretary of state when appointed in 1801, and for about a month he did both jobs at once.

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

Samuel Chase, an outspoken Federalist, was impeached in 1804 over his partisan conduct on the bench; the Senate acquitted him on every count in 1805 and he served until 1811.

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

Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens, Taney wrote, so Dred Scott had no right to sue for his freedom; the 14th Amendment overturned the ruling in 1868.

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

Railroad car: Homer Plessy sat in it on purpose for a test case planned by a New Orleans activists' committee, and the railroad cooperated because it disliked paying for extra cars.

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

William O. Douglas joined the court at 40 and stayed more than 36 years, retiring in 1975 only after a stroke had left him partly paralysed.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was wounded three times fighting for the Union in the Civil War, four decades before he joined the court; he stepped down in 1932, two months short of 91.

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

Woodrow Wilson's choice of the 'People's Lawyer' set off a bitter four-month fight, with the American Bar Association among the opponents, before the Senate confirmed Brandeis 47-22.

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

William Howard Taft became chief justice in 1921, eight years after leaving the presidency, and persuaded Congress to fund the court's first building of its own, though he died before it opened.

Where did the Supreme Court meet for over a century before its own building opened in 1935?

U.S. Capitol: nobody had planned a home for the court when the government moved to Washington in 1800, so Congress lent the justices a room, and they were still borrowing one, the Old Senate Chamber, in 1935.

Which architect of the Woolworth Building also designed the Supreme Court Building?

Cass Gilbert died in 1934, a year before the building opened, so his son helped see his last design through to completion.

What motto is carved above the main west entrance of the Supreme Court Building?

Equal Justice Under Law sits beneath a sculpted pediment whose artist, Robert Aitken, carved his own likeness among the figures; the east side reads 'Justice, the Guardian of Liberty'.

The top-floor gym in the Supreme Court Building has a basketball floor with what nickname?

The Highest Court in the Land is a fifth-floor basketball court where a sign bans play while the justices are sitting, because a bouncing ball booms through the chambers below.

Whose failed plan would have added a justice for each one over 70?

Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed it in 1937, wanting up to six extra justices after the court struck down New Deal laws; Congress never passed the plan, and it cost him political support.

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

Fred Korematsu had minor plastic surgery and took a false name to avoid removal, but was arrested anyway; a federal court finally overturned his conviction in 1983.

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

California elected Earl Warren governor three times in a row; as its attorney general in 1942 he had pressed for the removal of Japanese Americans, which his memoirs say he deeply regretted.

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

Topeka, Kansas, where Oliver Brown sued after the school nearest his home refused to enrol his daughter; five such cases were bundled together, and the ruling was unanimous.

A 1978 Supreme Court ruling on indecent radio began when a station aired which comedian's routine about banned words?

George Carlin's monologue went out one afternoon in 1973; a man who heard it in the car with his young son complained, and the court let regulators sanction stations that air such language when children may be listening.

A 2018 Supreme Court win for New Jersey freed every state to legalise what?

Sports betting had been kept out of almost every state by a 1992 federal law, one of whose sponsors was New Jersey's own senator, former NBA star Bill Bradley.

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

In pencil on prison stationery, Clarence Earl Gideon wrote his own appeal after studying in the prison library; the court ruled for him unanimously, and a retrial with a lawyer ended in acquittal.

Under the 1964 ruling in Sullivan's suit against The New York Times, officials suing for defamation must prove what?

Actual malice means knowing a statement was false or recklessly ignoring whether it was; the case began with a civil rights fundraising ad whose minor errors prompted an Alabama official to sue.

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

Phoenix police questioned him in 1963 and got a signed confession without telling him his rights; retried without that confession, he was convicted again.

What was the fitting surname of the couple whose 1967 case struck down bans on interracial marriage?

Loving: Richard and Mildred were arrested in their bedroom weeks after marrying in Washington, D.C., and a judge suspended their jail term only if they left Virginia for 25 years.

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

Black armbands got Mary Beth Tinker, her brother John and a friend suspended in Des Moines; the court ruled that students do not shed their free-speech rights 'at the schoolhouse gate'.

In 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered President Richard Nixon to hand over what?

Tape recordings of Oval Office conversations, which Nixon had withheld by claiming executive privilege; he resigned sixteen days after the unanimous ruling.

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

Ronald Reagan was keeping a 1980 campaign promise to name the first woman to the court; the Senate confirmed her 99-0.

Which president completed a full term yet left office without ever appointing a Supreme Court justice?

Jimmy Carter never had a vacancy to fill in his four years, though his appeals-court picks included a future justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Which Supreme Court nominee did the Senate reject 58-42 in 1987?

Robert Bork lost after an intense campaign against his record, and his name became a verb: to 'bork' is to attack a nominee or public figure systematically.

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

Thurgood Marshall, the lawyer who had won Brown v. Board of Education, retired in 1991; Thomas was confirmed 52-48 after televised hearings on Anita Hill's allegations.

In 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg replaced which retiring justice, a former NFL star nicknamed 'Whizzer'?

Byron White put off a Rhodes Scholarship to play for Pittsburgh in 1938, then left for Oxford; he later played two more NFL seasons while a Yale law student.

The Supreme Court's December 2000 ruling on the Bush-Gore election halted a recount in which state?

Florida's own supreme court had ordered a statewide hand recount of ballots the machines had missed; halting it left George W. Bush the winner of the state, and with it the presidency.

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

William Rehnquist died in September 2005 while Roberts, once his law clerk, was awaiting hearings for Sandra Day O'Connor's seat; Bush switched the nomination to the top job.

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

The Bronx: she grew up in the Bronxdale Houses public-housing project and decided as a child to become a lawyer after watching TV's Perry Mason.

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

Hillary Clinton was the subject of 'Hillary: The Movie', made as she ran for president in 2008; the ruling freed corporations and unions to spend without limit on independent political ads.

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

5-4, with Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority and all four dissenters filing opinions of their own; the ruling required every state to license and recognise the marriages.

Whose death in 2016 created the vacancy for which Merrick Garland was nominated but never given a hearing?

Antonin Scalia died in February 2016; the Senate majority refused to consider Garland for 293 days until the nomination expired, and the seat was filled the following year.

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

Stephen Breyer hired her as a law clerk for the court's 1999 term; when he retired in 2022, she was sworn in the same day to succeed her old boss.

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

Abortion: Dobbs overruled Roe v. Wade after 49 years and returned the issue to the states; a draft of the opinion had leaked to the press weeks before the ruling.

In 2011 the Supreme Court struck down a state law banning the sale to minors of what?

Violent video games deserve the same protection as books, the court said, noting that the Grimm fairy tales read to children are gory too: Cinderella's stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves.

By custom, who acts as doorkeeper during the nine justices' private conferences?

The most junior associate justice answers any knock and passes messages in and out, because no clerks or staff are allowed in the room while the nine confer.

A Supreme Court term traditionally begins on which day?

The first Monday in October is fixed by federal law; the original 1789 act instead had the court sit twice a year, starting in February and August.

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

Life tenure was meant to shield judges from political pressure; a justice can be removed only by impeachment and conviction.

In 1994 the Supreme Court ruled that 2 Live Crew's parody of which Roy Orbison hit could be fair use?

Oh, Pretty Woman: the rap group had asked permission to parody the song and been refused, but the court ruled unanimously that a parody sold for profit can still be fair use.

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

Amy Coney Barrett earned her law degree at Notre Dame and returned to teach there for 15 years; the other eight justices of 2025 all studied law at Harvard or Yale.

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

Elena Kagan was nominated to a federal appeals court in 1999, but the Senate never acted, so she reached the Supreme Court in 2010 without ever having been a judge.

In 1967 the Supreme Court ruled the FBI needed a warrant for a bug it had attached to what?

A phone booth: agents recorded a gambler passing on wagers from it, but the court said the Fourth Amendment 'protects people, not places', and a caller who shuts the door can expect not to be overheard.

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.