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 01Who signed the 1869 law setting nine Supreme Court seats?
Ulysses S. Grant
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.
Q 02In 1955 the Supreme Court told school districts to desegregate 'with all deliberate' what?
Speed
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.
Q 03Who was the first Chief Justice of the United States?
John Jay
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.
Q 04Where did the Supreme Court hold its first session, in February 1790?
New York City
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.
Q 05Which 1803 case established judicial review, letting courts strike down unconstitutional laws?
Marbury v. Madison
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.
Q 06Who is the longest-serving chief justice in U.S. history, holding the post from 1801 to 1835?
John Marshall
John Marshall was John Adams's secretary of state when appointed in 1801, and for about a month he did both jobs at once.
Q 07Which justice is the only one ever to have been impeached by the House of Representatives?
Samuel Chase
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.
Q 08The 1857 Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, held what?
Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens
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.
Q 09The 1896 'separate but equal' case involved a man who boarded a whites-only what?
Railroad car
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.
Q 10Which justice set the record for longest service on the court, sitting from 1939 to 1975?
William O. Douglas
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.
Q 11Which justice retired from the court at the age of 90, the oldest ever to serve?
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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.
Q 12Who nominated Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice, in 1916?
Woodrow Wilson
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.
Q 13Who is the only person to have served both as President of the United States and as Chief Justice?
William Howard Taft
Q 21The 1954 ruling that ended legal school segregation concerned a school district where?
Topeka, Kansas
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.
Q 22A 1978 Supreme Court ruling on indecent radio began when a station aired which comedian's routine about banned words?
George Carlin
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.
Q 23A 2018 Supreme Court win for New Jersey freed every state to legalise what?
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.
Q 14Where did the Supreme Court meet for over a century before its own building opened in 1935?
U.S. Capitol
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.
Q 15Which architect of the Woolworth Building also designed the Supreme Court Building?
Cass Gilbert
Cass Gilbert died in 1934, a year before the building opened, so his son helped see his last design through to completion.
Q 16What motto is carved above the main west entrance of the Supreme Court Building?
Equal Justice Under Law
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'.
Q 17The top-floor gym in the Supreme Court Building has a basketball floor with what nickname?
The Highest Court in the Land
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.
Q 18Whose failed plan would have added a justice for each one over 70?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
Q 19The 1944 case upholding the wartime exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast bears whose name?
Fred Korematsu
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.
Q 20Before Eisenhower made him chief justice in 1953, Earl Warren had been governor of which state?
California
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.
Sports betting
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.
Q 24The 1963 case guaranteeing poor defendants a lawyer began with a petition written how?
In pencil on prison stationery
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.
Q 25Under the 1964 ruling in Sullivan's suit against The New York Times, officials suing for defamation must prove what?
Actual malice
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.
Q 26In which city was Ernesto Miranda, whose 1966 case created the 'right to remain silent' warning, arrested?
Phoenix
Phoenix police questioned him in 1963 and got a signed confession without telling him his rights; retried without that confession, he was convicted again.
Q 27What was the fitting surname of the couple whose 1967 case struck down bans on interracial marriage?
Loving
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.
Q 28In the 1969 Tinker case, students won the right to wear what to school in protest at the Vietnam War?
Black armbands
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'.
Q 29In 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered President Richard Nixon to hand over what?
Tape recordings
Tape recordings of Oval Office conversations, which Nixon had withheld by claiming executive privilege; he resigned sixteen days after the unanimous ruling.
Q 30Who nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the court, in 1981?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan was keeping a 1980 campaign promise to name the first woman to the court; the Senate confirmed her 99-0.