To Change the Future, Children Need History

[David Lockmiller]

The Tenth Circuit Act of 1863 (12 Stat. 794) was a federal statute which increased the size of the Supreme Court of the United States from nine justices to ten, and which also reorganized the circuit courts of the federal judiciary. The newly created Tenth Circuit consisted of California and Oregon, and addressed the judicial needs of the newly-created western states. The Act became effective on March 3, 1863, during the Lincoln administration.

The Judiciary Act of 1869 was the last piece of legislation which altered the size of the Supreme Court. Pursuant to the Tenth Circuit 1863 Act, Stephen Johnson Field was installed in the newly created Associate Justice seat. Shortly thereafter, Salmon P. Chase replaced Roger B. Taney as Chief Justice of the United States, and in 1865 Associate Justice John Catron died; Catron's vacancy would never be refilled as a consequence of the Judicial Circuits Act of 1866. Later Supreme Court vacancies in the coming years would be addressed by the 1869 Act, which permanently fixed the size of the Supreme Court at nine.
(Source: Wikipedia on the subject of “Tenth Circuit Act of 1863”)

“Lincoln appointed five justices in just four years and five weeks as president.”
(Source: “Kamala Harris’s ‘little history lesson’ about Lincoln’s Supreme Court vacancy wasn’t exactly true” – Washington Post, October 9, 2020.)