About & methodology

Good Behaviour shows every seat on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1789 to November 7, 2026: who held it, for how long, and how long it sat empty between holders. The name comes from Article III, Section 1, under which federal judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.”

The data covers 116 justices and 121 appointments (5 justices held two). It is rebuilt from the sources below and checked by automated tests whenever they change.

Sources

• Federal Judicial Center, Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges: Federal Judicial Service (last changed November 7, 2026)
• Federal Judicial Center, Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges: Demographics (last changed November 7, 2026)
• Supreme Court of the United States, Justices 1789 to Present (last changed November 7, 2026)

The Federal Judicial Center (FJC), the research agency of the federal courts, is the source for seat lineage, nomination, confirmation and commission dates, Senate votes, appointing presidents and their parties, and birth and death dates. The Supreme Court's own list of its members is the source for the dates service began and ended. Both are works of the United States government and in the public domain. Links to Wikipedia are for further reading; no Wikipedia content is reproduced.

When a tenure starts and ends

A nominee becomes a justice in stages: nomination, Senate confirmation, the President's commission, and the judicial oath. These can be weeks apart. This site starts each tenure on the day the justice took the judicial oath, the convention the Court itself uses, since until the oath is taken a justice “is not vested with the prerogatives of the office.” Every other date appears in each justice's detail panel.

Commission dates would misstate the record. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was commissioned on April 8, 2022, but Justice Breyer served until June 30, 2022, the day she took the oath. Using the commission date would put two justices in one seat for nearly three months. Recess appointees such as Earl Warren, William J. Brennan, Jr., and Potter Stewart began serving months before their post-confirmation commissions, so their tenures start at the oath taken under the recess commission.

A tenure ends on the date the Court gives for the end of service: death, resignation, retirement, or elevation to Chief Justice. A retiring justice may retain the office under 28 U.S.C. § 371(b) and may be designated to sit on lower courts under 28 U.S.C. § 294(a), so the FJC records such a justice's judicial service as ending at death. On this site the seat is vacated at retirement, and the detail panel shows both dates.

Some of the Court's early oath dates come from secondary records. Where the Court marks a date as coming from another court's minutes, from “other unquestionable authority,” or from “questionable” authority, the detail panel says so.

Seats

Seats are numbered as the FJC numbers them. Seat 1 is the Chief Justiceship, which is a separate office with its own appointment; an associate justice who becomes Chief Justice (Edward Douglass White, Harlan Fiske Stone, William H. Rehnquist) leaves one seat and takes another. Charles Evans Hughes resigned an associate seat in 1916 and returned as Chief Justice in 1930. John Rutledge served as an associate justice and, later, as Chief Justice under a recess appointment that the Senate rejected.

Congress has changed the size of the Court several times, so seats are drawn honestly: a row begins when a statute created the seat and ends if one abolished it. Eleven rows have existed; never more than ten at once.

Seats in existence over time: 6 from September 24, 1789; 7 from February 24, 1807; 9 from March 3, 1837; 10 from March 3, 1863; 9 from July 23, 1866; 8 from July 5, 1867; 9 from December 6, 1869.

Vacancies

A vacancy runs from the day one justice's service ended to the day the next justice in that seat took the judicial oath. It therefore includes any time a confirmed nominee waited to be sworn in. A newly created seat is vacant until its first justice takes the oath, and a seat abolished while empty ends in a vacancy. The longest vacancy was841 days, in Seat 4, from April 21, 1844 to August 10, 1846.

Party and president

Colors show the party of the appointing president as the FJC records it, not the justice's own affiliation. George Washington belonged to no party. The Jeffersonian Republicans (often called Democratic-Republicans) are unrelated to the modern Republican Party and have their own color.

Seniority

“The Court on” lists the Chief Justice first and the associate justices by the dates of their commissions (28 U.S.C. § 4), using the recess commission for recess appointees; justices with the same commission date are ordered by age.

Where the sources disagree

The FJC and the Court occasionally give different dates for the end of service. This site follows the Court and lists every difference here. A difference of more than three days must be reviewed and explained before the data can be published.

Not yet included

• Failed, withdrawn, and declined nominations (such as Robert Bork, Merrick Garland, and Harriet Miers), and nominees who were confirmed but never served (such as Robert H. Harrison and Edwin M. Stanton).
• The federal courts of appeals, which are planned next.

Corrections

Spotted an error? Please get in touch through axelhufford.com. Corrections are made in the data pipeline and recorded with a note, so the change and its reason are both visible.

Built by Axel Hufford.