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Please note!
This fact brief was originally published as an experiment to test the concepts behind fact briefs.
Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of useful information in fact briefs like this one, not all of them reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Does the Constitution say the Supreme Court has to have nine members?

By Christopher Hutton
NO

The Constitution created the Supreme Court but left to Congress the rest of the work of building the new country's judicial system--even when it came to specifying the size of the country's highest court. The court was established with six judges in 1789, reduced through legislation to five in 1801 and went as high as 10 briefly during the Civil War. Its current nine-member bench was fixed in 1869.

President Franklin Roosevelt's own Democratic party nixed his idea of expanding the court in 1937. Some of the early entrants in the 2020 Democratic primary embraced the notion of a larger bench, but Joe Biden said in July of 2019 he was opposed to the idea.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.
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