[1] In 1874, the U.S. government created the United States Reports, and retroactively numbered older privately-published case reports as part of the new series.

As such, the dual form of citation to, for example, Hannewinkle v. Georgetown is 82 U.S. (15 Wall.)

Wallace's Reports were the final nominative reports for the US Supreme Court; starting with volume 91, cases were identified simply as "(volume #) U.S. (page #) (year)".

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.