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.

were decided the Court comprised these nine justices: In Swift v. Tyson, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.)

539 (1842), the US Supreme Court held that the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 pre-empted a state law that made it a crime to take blacks out of the free state of Pennsylvania and into slavery elsewhere.

Also, by refusing to take judicial notice of the problem of free blacks being kidnapped in free states and sold into slavery, Prigg implied that blacks were entitled to fewer procedural protections than were whites.