Seat by Seat

Every chair the Supreme Court has had since 1789, and everyone who has sat in it: 121 tenures in 11 seats, nine of them still filled today.

A justice does not take a place on the Court in the abstract. He or she succeeds somebody, into a particular chair, and the chain of those successions is the Court’s other history: the one in which Sonia Sotomayor sits in James Wilson’s seat and Clarence Thomas in Joseph P. Bradley’s. Each row below is one seat, named here for its first occupant; each bar is one tenure, from the judicial oath to the day the justice left the bench. Where the track shows through between two bars, the seat was empty.

Chief JusticeJ. MarshallTaneyWaiteFullerWarrenBurgerRehnquistJ. RobertsWilson’s seatWashingtonGrierMcReynoldsBrennanSouterSotomayorCushing’s seatCushingStoryCliffordGrayHolmesFrankfurterBlackmunBreyerK. JacksonBlair’s seatDuvallDanielMillerBrownBrandeisDouglasStevensKaganJ. Rutledge’s seatThompsonNelsonE. WhiteVan DevanterBlackPowellKennedyKavanaughIredell’s seatW. JohnsonWaynenot refilled after 1867Todd’s seatToddMcLeanSwayneBrewerReedB. WhiteGinsburgBarrettCatron’s seatCatronnot refilled after 1865McKinley’s seatDavisHarlan IStewartO'ConnorAlitoField’s seatFieldMcKennaStoneScaliaGorsuchBradley’s seatBradleyDayButlerClarkT. MarshallThomas18501900195020001789

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Each bar runs from a justice’s oath to the day he or she left the Court; a gap between bars is a vacancy. ■ sitting today. Point at or tab to a bar for dates; select it to open the profile.
17
Chief Justices
From John Jay in 1789 to John G. Roberts Jr. Five of them had sat in an Associate seat first, and appear on the chart twice.
17
Most occupied seat
Wilson’s seat has changed hands more often than any other Associate seat: seventeen justices, as many as have held the Chief Justiceship.
2.3 yrs
Longest vacancy
Wilson’s seat, empty for 841 days between Henry Baldwin’s last day on the Court, April 21, 1844, and Robert C. Grier’s oath on August 10, 1846.
36.6 yrs
Longest in one seat
William O. Douglas, in Blair’s seat. The fewest hands a seat still filled has passed through: eight, in Field’s seat and Bradley’s seat.

Why eleven rows for nine seats

The number of seats is set by Congress, and it has moved. The Judiciary Act of 1789 “provided for the appointment of a Chief Justice and five associate justices”; statutes of 1807, 1837 and 1863 added one, two and one more, for a Court of ten. In 1866 Congress “reduced the number of authorized seats on the Supreme Court from ten to seven,” and in 1869 it “increased the size of the Supreme Court to nine justices, one for each of the judicial circuits.” The quotations are the Federal Judicial Center’s legislative history of the Court.

No justice was removed. Two seats simply stopped: Iredell’s seat, empty after the death of James M. Wayne on July 5, 1867 and Catron’s seat, empty after the death of John Catron on May 30, 1865. Neither was filled again. The seat that Joseph P. Bradley took in 1870 has no predecessor: it is the one the 1869 act added.

Five justices held two seats, and each appears twice: John Rutledge, Edward D. White, Charles Evans Hughes, Harlan Fiske Stone and William H. Rehnquist, each an Associate Justice before becoming Chief. Three went straight from one chair to the other. Hughes resigned his Associate seat in 1916 and came back as Chief Justice in 1930; Rutledge resigned his in 1791 and returned in 1795 on a recess appointment as Chief Justice that the Senate did not confirm.

Every seat, in order

The chart as text. Years are the years of the oath and of departure.

Chief Justice1789–today · 17

  1. 1John Jay1789–1795
  2. 2John Rutledge1795–1795
  3. 3Oliver Ellsworth1796–1800
  4. 4John Marshall1801–1835
  5. 5Roger B. Taney1836–1864
  6. 6Salmon P. Chase1864–1873
  7. 7Morrison R. Waite1874–1888
  8. 8Melville W. Fuller1888–1910
  9. 9Edward D. White1910–1921
  10. 10William Howard Taft1921–1930
  11. 11Charles Evans Hughes1930–1941
  12. 12Harlan Fiske Stone1941–1946
  13. 13Fred M. Vinson1946–1953
  14. 14Earl Warren1953–1969
  15. 15Warren E. Burger1969–1986
  16. 16William H. Rehnquist1986–2005
  17. 17John G. Roberts Jr.2005–present · sitting

Wilson’s seat1789–today · 17

  1. 1James Wilson1789–1798
  2. 2Bushrod Washington1798–1829
  3. 3Henry Baldwin1830–1844
  4. 4Robert C. Grier1846–1870
  5. 5William Strong1870–1880
  6. 6William B. Woods1881–1887
  7. 7Lucius Q.C. Lamar1888–1893
  8. 8Howell E. Jackson1893–1895
  9. 9Rufus W. Peckham1896–1909
  10. 10Horace H. Lurton1910–1914
  11. 11James C. McReynolds1914–1941
  12. 12James F. Byrnes1941–1942
  13. 13Wiley B. Rutledge1943–1949
  14. 14Sherman Minton1949–1956
  15. 15William J. Brennan Jr.1956–1990
  16. 16David H. Souter1990–2009
  17. 17Sonia Sotomayor2009–present · sitting

Cushing’s seat1790–today · 14

  1. 1William Cushing1790–1810
  2. 2Joseph Story1812–1845
  3. 3Levi Woodbury1845–1851
  4. 4Benjamin R. Curtis1851–1857
  5. 5Nathan Clifford1858–1881
  6. 6Horace Gray1882–1902
  7. 7Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.1902–1932
  8. 8Benjamin N. Cardozo1932–1938
  9. 9Felix Frankfurter1939–1962
  10. 10Arthur J. Goldberg1962–1965
  11. 11Abe Fortas1965–1969
  12. 12Harry A. Blackmun1970–1994
  13. 13Stephen G. Breyer1994–2022
  14. 14Ketanji Brown Jackson2022–present · sitting

Blair’s seat1790–today · 13

  1. 1John Blair Jr.1790–1795
  2. 2Samuel Chase1796–1811
  3. 3Gabriel Duvall1811–1835
  4. 4Philip P. Barbour1836–1841
  5. 5Peter V. Daniel1842–1860
  6. 6Samuel F. Miller1862–1890
  7. 7Henry B. Brown1891–1906
  8. 8William H. Moody1906–1910
  9. 9Joseph R. Lamar1911–1916
  10. 10Louis D. Brandeis1916–1939
  11. 11William O. Douglas1939–1975
  12. 12John Paul Stevens1975–2010
  13. 13Elena Kagan2010–present · sitting

J. Rutledge’s seat1790–today · 14

  1. 1John Rutledge1790–1791
  2. 2Thomas Johnson1791–1793
  3. 3William Paterson1793–1806
  4. 4Henry Brockholst Livingston1807–1823
  5. 5Smith Thompson1823–1843
  6. 6Samuel Nelson1845–1872
  7. 7Ward Hunt1873–1882
  8. 8Samuel Blatchford1882–1893
  9. 9Edward D. White1894–1910
  10. 10Willis Van Devanter1911–1937
  11. 11Hugo L. Black1937–1971
  12. 12Lewis F. Powell Jr.1972–1987
  13. 13Anthony M. Kennedy1988–2018
  14. 14Brett M. Kavanaugh2018–present · sitting

Iredell’s seat1790–1867 · 4

  1. 1James Iredell1790–1799
  2. 2Alfred Moore1800–1804
  3. 3William Johnson1804–1834
  4. 4James M. Wayne1835–1867

Todd’s seat1807–today · 14

  1. 1Thomas Todd1807–1826
  2. 2Robert Trimble1826–1828
  3. 3John McLean1829–1861
  4. 4Noah H. Swayne1862–1881
  5. 5Stanley Matthews1881–1889
  6. 6David J. Brewer1890–1910
  7. 7Charles Evans Hughes1910–1916
  8. 8John H. Clarke1916–1922
  9. 9George Sutherland1922–1938
  10. 10Stanley F. Reed1938–1957
  11. 11Charles E. Whittaker1957–1962
  12. 12Byron R. White1962–1993
  13. 13Ruth Bader Ginsburg1993–2020
  14. 14Amy Coney Barrett2020–present · sitting

Catron’s seat1837–1865 · 1

  1. 1John Catron1837–1865

McKinley’s seat1838–today · 11

  1. 1John McKinley1838–1852
  2. 2John A. Campbell1853–1861
  3. 3David Davis1862–1877
  4. 4John Marshall Harlan1877–1911
  5. 5Mahlon Pitney1912–1922
  6. 6Edward T. Sanford1923–1930
  7. 7Owen J. Roberts1930–1945
  8. 8Harold H. Burton1945–1958
  9. 9Potter Stewart1958–1981
  10. 10Sandra Day O'Connor1981–2006
  11. 11Samuel A. Alito Jr.2006–present · sitting

Field’s seat1863–today · 8

  1. 1Stephen J. Field1863–1897
  2. 2Joseph McKenna1898–1925
  3. 3Harlan Fiske Stone1925–1941
  4. 4Robert H. Jackson1941–1954
  5. 5John Marshall Harlan II1955–1971
  6. 6William H. Rehnquist1972–1986
  7. 7Antonin Scalia1986–2016
  8. 8Neil M. Gorsuch2017–present · sitting

Bradley’s seat1870–today · 8

  1. 1Joseph P. Bradley1870–1892
  2. 2George Shiras Jr.1892–1903
  3. 3William R. Day1903–1922
  4. 4Pierce Butler1923–1939
  5. 5Frank Murphy1940–1949
  6. 6Tom C. Clark1949–1967
  7. 7Thurgood Marshall1967–1991
  8. 8Clarence Thomas1991–present · sitting

How this is built

Who followed whom comes from each justice’s profile, where it has always been printed as “preceded by” and “succeeded by.” The five two-seat justices carry their Chief Justice line there; their Associate seat is read from the neighbours, whose own records name them. Dates are the same oath-to-departure dates the average-age chart uses, checked against the Federal Judicial Center, with a promotion split at the Chief Justice oath as the U.S. Supreme Court Justices Database of Epstein and colleagues records it. A justice who retired leaves the chart on the day he or she stopped sitting, not the day of death.

11 seats · 121 tenures · computed October 1, 2026.