Qualla: Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo by Mr. Kjetil Ree., CC BY-SA 3.0. On February 2, 1790, the Supreme Court of the United States held its first session in the Royal Exchange building at the corner of Broad and Water Streets in lower Manhattan. The court had six justices, no cases, and no permanent home. The early sessions were devoted to procedural housekeeping. The first decision did not arrive until 1791. For the next 145 years - longer than the lifetime of nearly every American then living - the court would meet in borrowed quarters: the Royal Exchange, Philadelphia's City Hall, a basement room in the Capitol, the old Senate chamber upstairs. Not until 1935 did the court move into the Cass Gilbert marble temple at One First Street NE that most Americans today imagine when they hear the words Supreme Court. The building came late. The institution that filled it had already shaped the United States more than almost any other.

Image: Photo by Mr. Kjetil Ree. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Supreme Court of the United States: The Marshall Inheritance

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alonzo Chappel, Public domain. Article III of the Constitution sketches the federal judiciary in fewer than 400 words. The framers compromised in Philadelphia in 1787 by leaving the details to Congress, vesting judicial power in 'one supreme Court' and 'such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to tim...

Image: Alonzo Chappel | Public domain

Supreme Court of the United States: Dred Scott and the Civil War

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit bloggerken, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Court's prestige collapsed in 1857 when Roger Taney's majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford ruled that Black Americans, free or enslaved, could not be citizens and that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories. Dred Scott helped push the country to ci...

Image: bloggerken | CC BY-SA 3.0

Supreme Court of the United States: Cass Gilbert's Temple

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0. For 146 years the Court had nowhere of its own to sit. From 1810 to 1860 it met in a basement chamber below the Senate. After the Senate moved upstairs, the Court took over the old Senate Chamber. Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who had been president before becoming chief jus...

Image: Beyond My Ken | CC BY-SA 4.0

Supreme Court of the United States: The Court of the Twentieth Century

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The Hughes, Stone, and Vinson courts (1930-1953) initially struck down much of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and then, after Roosevelt's failed 1937 court-packing plan, reversed course. The Court upheld the internment of Japanese Americans in Korematsu in 1944 - a decision the Co...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Supreme Court of the United States: Nine Lives

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elena_Kagan_official_SCOTUS_portrait.jpg: Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States derivative work: Daffy123 (talk), Public domain. Today the court has nine justices - the number set by the Judiciary Act of 1869 and unchanged since. Chief Justice John Roberts has presided since 2005. Clarence Thomas, appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1991, is the senior associate justice and the longest-tenured. Sonia Sotomayo...

Image: Elena_Kagan_official_SCOTUS_portrait.jpg: Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States derivative work: Daffy123 (talk) | Public domain