On Fuller's accession to the office, the Fuller Court consisted of associate justices: Samuel Freeman Miller, Stephen Johnson Field, Joseph P. Bradley, John Marshall Harlan, Stanley Matthews, Horace Gray, Samuel Blatchford, and Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II – who had taken office earlier that year.

Matthews, Miller, and Bradley all died between 1889 and 1892, and President Benjamin Harrison appointed David Josiah Brewer, Henry Billings Brown, and George Shiras Jr. to replace them.

White was Cleveland's third nominee to the seat that had been held by Blatchford, following the Senate's rejections of William B. Hornblower and Wheeler Hazard Peckham.

Gray died in 1902 and Shiras retired in 1903; President Theodore Roosevelt successfully nominated Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and William R. Day to replace them.

Between the death of Fuller and the elevation of White, Charles Evans Hughes joined the court as the successor to David Josiah Brewer, who died in 1910.