Six Justices and a New Branch: The Judiciary Act of 1789
On September 24, 1789, George Washington signed the Judiciary Act, creating the Supreme Court and the federal court system — and completing America's three branches of government.
The U.S. Constitution promised Americans "one supreme Court" — and then left nearly everything else blank. How many justices? What lower courts? Who would speak for the government in court? The framers left those questions to Congress. On September 24, 1789, Congress answered them, and President George Washington signed the answers into law: the Judiciary Act of 1789, the statute that built the federal court system.
The bill was the work of the very first Congress, meeting in New York City, then the nation's capital. Its principal author was Senator Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut — who would later become the third chief justice — working with Senator William Paterson of New Jersey. Senator Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced it; Representative Fisher Ames of Massachusetts carried it through the House. The Senate passed it on July 17, the House on September 17, and Washington signed it a week later.
The Act set the Supreme Court at six justices — one chief justice and five associates, any four a quorum — and gave the young Court jurisdiction over disputes between states, cases involving ambassadors, and appeals from lower courts. It divided the eleven states that had then ratified the Constitution into thirteen judicial districts, each with a district court, and created circuit courts above them — with Supreme Court justices riding horseback from town to town to hear cases alongside local judges. It also created the office of Attorney General, the government's lawyer before the Court.
Washington wasted no time. The same day he signed the Act, he nominated the first justices: John Jay as chief justice, joined by John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson. The Senate confirmed them on September 26. The new Court held its first session on February 1, 1790, in New York's Royal Exchange Building — though it would wait until 1935 for a building of its own, and the number of justices would shift several times before settling at nine in 1869.
The Act's deepest legacy is the one it made possible. By giving the federal courts real structure and real cases, it set the stage for the Supreme Court to become what it is today: the final interpreter of the Constitution, the referee of American democracy. Every federal courthouse in the country traces its lineage to a law signed on September 24, 1789 — the day America's third branch of government got its blueprint.
Photo: Ajay Suresh, CC BY 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
