Supreme Court seats

Back Story

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump has said he would announce his Supreme Court nominee as soon as today.

While there are currently nine seats on the court, that hasn’t always been the case.

The Constitution doesn’t specify the number of justices, leaving it to Congress to determine.

In 1789, the Judiciary Act established the number of justices at six, with a chief justice and five associate justices.

Over time, the number fluctuated up to as many as 10 justices. In 1869, the number was set at nine, where it has remained.

Presidents have sometimes tried to influence Congress’s determination of the number.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt often clashed with the conservative court in the 1930s over his New Deal programs.

In 1937, he pushed a plan that would add a justice, up to a total of 15, for each Supreme Court justice over 70 who did not retire. (At the time, six of the justices were above that age.)

Roosevelt’s effort to pack the court ultimately failed, and the Senate Judiciary Committee said, “It is a measure which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.”