Established by Article III of the Constitution, the detailed structure of the court was laid down by the 1st United States Congress in 1789.
Of these, 11 nominees were rejected in Senate roll-call votes, 11 were withdrawn by the president, and 15 lapsed at the end of a session of Congress.
[4] Among the six original nominees to the Supreme Court, George Washington nominated Robert H. Harrison, who declined to serve.
Washington had realized that since the law establishing the positions within the Supreme Court had been passed during Paterson's term as a Senator (a post he had resigned in November 1790 after being elected Governor of New Jersey) the nomination was a violation of Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution.
[9] After John Quincy Adams declined a nomination, Madison was finally successful in filling the seat with his appointment of Joseph Story.
Later that year, Jackson's successor Martin Van Buren appointed John McKinley to fill the vacancy.
[4] John Tyler experienced extreme difficulty in obtaining approval of his nominees due to his lack of political support in the Senate.
[4] Millard Fillmore, the last member of the Whig Party to serve as president, made three nominations to replace John McKinley, nominating Edward A. Bradford, George Edmund Badger, and William C. Micou, but the Senate, controlled by the Democratic Party, did not take action on any of the nominees.
[4] James Buchanan nominated Jeremiah S. Black to the court in early February 1861 to replace Peter Vivian Daniel.
Two justices died in office during Johnson's administration, James Moore Wayne and John Catron.
The following July, however, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act of 1866, which provided for a gradual elimination of seats until only seven were left.
[4] Grant nominated George Henry Williams to be Chief Justice of the United States in 1873, but he later withdrew from consideration.
[20] Grant then nominated Caleb Cushing for Chief Justice on January 9, 1874, but despite Cushing's great learning and eminence at the bar, his anti-war record and the feeling of distrust experienced by many members of the U.S. Senate on account of his inconsistency, aroused such vigorous opposition that his nomination was withdrawn on January 13, 1874.
[4] Early in 1881, President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Thomas Stanley Matthews for the position of Associate Justice.
Matthews was a controversial nominee due to his close ties to the railroad industry,[22] and as the nomination came near the end of Hayes's term, the Senate did not act on it.
[23][24] In 1882, Chester A. Arthur nominated Roscoe Conkling to serve as an Associate Justice after Ward Hunt resigned.
[22] On May 7, 1930, Herbert Hoover's nomination of Appellate Judge John J. Parker for the Supreme Court was rejected by a vote of 39–41.
[43] When Abe Fortas resigned in 1969 because of a scandal separate from his Chief Justice bid, Richard Nixon nominated Clement Haynsworth, a Southern jurist.
His nomination was rejected by the Senate by a vote of 45–55 on November 21, 1969,[45] due to concerns about Haynsworth's civil rights record and perceived ethical lapses.
[22] In response, Nixon nominated G. Harrold Carswell, a Floridian with a history of supporting segregation and opposing women's rights.
Nixon was soon faced with two more Supreme Court vacancies when John Harlan and Hugo Black retired in the fall of 1971.
Nixon considered nominating Arkansas lawyer Hershel Friday and California intermediate appellate judge Mildred Lillie to the high court.
By tradition at the time, potential Supreme Court nominees were first disclosed to the American Bar Association's standing committee on the federal judiciary.
When it became apparent that this 12-member committee would find that both were unqualified, Nixon passed over Friday and Lillie,[47] and nominated Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist.
Bork was a member of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia at the time and known as a proponent of constitutional originalism.
Before Ginsburg could be officially nominated, he withdrew himself from consideration under heavy pressure after revealing that he had smoked marijuana with his students while a professor at Harvard Law School.
[4] In October 2005, George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers, a corporate attorney from Texas who had served as Bush's private attorney and as White House Counsel, as an Associate Justice to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Miers was widely perceived as unqualified for the position, and it later emerged that she had allowed her law license to lapse for a time.
At Miers's request, Bush withdrew the nomination on October 27, ostensibly to avoid violating executive privilege by disclosing details of her work at the White House.
[54] On January 31, 2017, President Donald Trump, who succeeded Obama, nominated federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace Justice Scalia.