The Supreme Court of the United States was formally created in 1789 by the first Congress through the Judiciary Act of 1789, and it first met in early 1790 in New York City.

Constitutional origin

  • Article III of the U.S. Constitution, drafted in 1787, established that the “judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court,” creating the framework for a national high court but not its detailed structure.
  • The Constitution left it to Congress to decide how many justices there would be and how the rest of the federal court system would look, which is why later legislation became crucial.

Judiciary Act of 1789

  • The 1st Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, which actually brought the Supreme Court into being as a functioning institution and organized the broader federal judiciary.
  • This law set the Court at six members (one Chief Justice and five Associate Justices) and divided the country into judicial districts and circuits that the justices had to travel to, a demanding duty known as “riding circuit.”

First justices and early setup

  • President George Washington appointed John Jay as the first Chief Justice, along with five associate justices, shortly after the Judiciary Act became law.
  • John Jay took the oath in October 1789, completing the initial leadership of the Court and allowing it to begin organizing for its first term.

First meetings and “birthday”

  • The Court was first convened in New York City, then the national capital; it initially gathered at the Merchants’ Exchange Building and held its inaugural session in early February 1790.
  • Those first sessions focused mostly on organizational matters, since actual cases did not begin reaching the Court until 1791, so its role grew gradually rather than overnight.

How historians sum it up

  • In everyday terms, people often say the Supreme Court was “founded” in 1789, when Congress passed the Judiciary Act that officially created it as an operating court.
  • Others emphasize that its true beginning lies in the 1787 Constitution, which envisioned one supreme court, showing how the Court’s birth was a two-step process: constitutional design, then legislative implementation.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.