Supreme Court of the U.S. history

The Judiciary Act of 1802 eliminated the separate sessions and instead dictated that there would be one session which started on the first Monday in February.

Only one justice has been impeached, Samuel Chase, who was acquitted in 1805.

Economic growth and technological change necessitated legal reform, and in 1845 Congress extended admiralty jurisdiction to federally licensed vessels employed in interstate commerce on the Great Lakes and connecting waterways.

Board of Wardens (1852), where the Court held that areas requiring national uniformity would be the exclusive domain of Congress, while other matters of commercial regulation would be the purview of states.

Taney strongly believed in his Dred Scott decision, writing to Franklin Pierce in 1857 that he believed with "abiding confidence that this act of my judicial life will stand the test of time and the sober judgment of the country."

Following Lincoln’s death, in 1866 Congress enacted legislation reducing the Court’s size by attrition to seven, thus preventing President Andrew Johnson—a fierce opponent of congressional reconstruction plans—from nominating any justices.

In response, they passed the Tenure of Office Act in March of 1867.

In 1873, Congress changed the start of a new term to the second Monday in October.

The Removal Act of 1875, most importantly, expanded the original and appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts, which led to a dramatic increase in the Court’s caseload.

The Evarts Acts of 1891 had created intermediate federal courts of appeal and finally brought an end to the practice of circuit riding.

The nation underwent rapid economic expansion and industrialization during this period, and a trio of controversial decisions in 1895 put the Court squarely on the side of capitalists (see Figure 3).

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Brandeis to the Court, making him the first Jewish justice.

Children’s Hospital (1924). When the Great Depression hit and President Franklin Roosevelt enacted measures to bring about economic recovery and reform, the “Four Horsemen” stuck to their constitutional principles, thereby thwarting the president’s agenda.

Figure 5. “The Marble Palace.” The Supreme Court building, made of white marble, opened in 1935.

One notable attempt to increase the number of Associate Justices came from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who proposed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937.

Arizona (1966), while expanding the right to counsel in Gideon v.

There was perhaps no greater symbol of the period than President Lyndon B. Johnson’s appointment in 1967 of Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney for the NAACP in Brown, as the first African American associate justice on the Supreme Court.

Until 1978, the Court had a formal recess in July and August, though it would reconvene for matters of national significance.

For an example of one law professor who argues vigorously that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to incorporate the Bill of Rights, see Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

Federal Election Commission (2010), the same majority built on a Burger-era precedent in holding that corporate donations to independent political broadcasts were free speech protected by the First Amendment, thus opening the door for more money to flow into the nation’s political system.

On this debate, see David E. Bernstein, Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights Against Progressive Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Paul Kens, Judicial Power and Reform Politics: The Anatomy of Lochner v.

Windsor, 570 United States ___ (2013); Obergefell v.