Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States
in part due to politics. During his first term in office, President Jackson appointed two Justices to the Court. During his second term, he nominated five additional Justices, including Taney as Chief Justice, bringing to seven his total number of nominees to the Court, of whom six served as Justices. The last five of President Jackson’s appointments came from slaveholding states.[58] President Jackson thus “made more Supreme Court appointments than any other president between Washington and Taft.”[59]
President Jackson was able to appoint so many Justices to the Court because on March 3, 1837—his last day in office—Congress, which was controlled by Jackson’s Democratic Party, passed a new Judiciary Act.[60] The Act of 1837 created two new circuits and added two new seats to the Court, bringing the total for both to nine for the first time in the nation’s history. The Act also took effect immediately, allowing outgoing President Jackson to nominate two Justices: John Catron, whose circuit-riding duties would cover the newly created Eighth Circuit, and William Smith for the new Ninth Circuit. When President Jackson’s successor Martin Van Buren (who had previously served as Jackson’s Vice President and Secretary of State) took office on March 4, 1837, the Senate confirmed both Catron’s and Smith’s nominations. Smith, however, declined, and Van Buren nominated John McKinley through a recess appointment.[61]
After decades of wrangling over Court expansion, circuit riding, and western representation, Congress ultimately restructured the federal judiciary in 1837 because it was possible to do so in a way that consolidated the Democratic Party’s control. “The two events which finally induced both Houses to agree were the election of Van Buren, bringing with it the prospect of a four-year Democratic rule, and the Supreme Court appointments made by Jackson in 1835 and 1836,” which eliminated “the fear that the addition of two new judges would change the complexion of the Court.”[62] Describing Jackson’s impact on the Court, one contemporary magazine characterized the “late renovation of the constitution of this august body, by the creation of seven of the nine members under the auspices of the present democratic ascendancy” as “the closing of an old, and the opening of a new, era in its history.”[63] For the first time in the nation’s history, the Court comprised nine Justices. The expansion had come about through a combination of factors: pragmatic concerns about the federal courts’ efficacy; sectional demands; and political imperatives.
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