The Supreme Court is established by Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which says: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court .

The size of the Court is not specified; the Constitution leaves it to Congress to set the number of justices.

When the cases in volume 170 were decided the Court comprised the following nine members: In Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898), the Supreme Court upheld provisions of the 1890 Mississippi constitution and its statutes that set requirements for voter registration, including poll tax, literacy tests, the grandfather clause, and the requirement that only registered voters could serve on juries.

The plaintiff, Henry Williams, claimed that Mississippi’s voting laws were upheld with the intent to disenfranchise African Americans, thus violating the Fourteenth Amendment.

The court found that any discrimination toward African Americans was performed by the administrative officers enforcing the law and that (at the time) there was no judicial remedy for this kind of discrimination.