who determines the number of justices on the supreme court
Appointment and confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States It is also theoretically possible for Congress to create additional vacancies by expanding the Court itself. The United States Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court, but in Article III it authorizes the Congress to fix the number of justices. The Judiciary Act of 1789 called for the appointment of six justices. As the country grew geographically, Congress increased the number of justices to correspond with the growing number of judicial circuits. In 1807, the court was expanded to seven members, allowing Thomas Jefferson to appoint Thomas Todd as a new Justice. The expansion to nine members in 1837 allowed Andrew Jackson to appoint John Catron, and Martin Van Buren to appoint John McKinley; and the addition of a tenth seat in 1863 allowed Abraham Lincoln to name Stephen Johnson Field to the Court. However, at the request of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act (1866) which provided that the next three justices to retire would not be replaced; thus, the size of the Court should have eventually reached seven by attrition. Consequently, one seat was removed in 1866 and a second in 1867. However, this law did not play out to completion, for in the Judiciary Act of 1869,[25] also known as the Circuit Judges Act, the number of justices was again set at nine, where it has since remained. The new seat created in 1869 was filled the following year by Ulysses S. Grant's appointment of Joseph P. Bradley - the last justice to be appointed to a newly created seat on the Court.