what bill divided the united states into 13 judicial districts
Judiciary Act of 1789 The Act also created 13 judicial districts within the 11 states that had then ratified the Constitution (North Carolina and Rhode Island were added as judicial districts in 1790, and other states as they were admitted to the Union). Each state comprised one district, except for Virginia and Massachusetts, each of which comprised two. Massachusetts was divided into the District of Maine (which was then part of Massachusetts) and the District of Massachusetts (which covered modern-day Massachusetts). Virginia was divided into the District of Kentucky (which was then part of Virginia) and the District of Virginia (which covered modern-day West Virginia and Virginia).
Appointment and confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States It is also theoretically possible for Congress to create additional vacancies by expanding the Court itself. The United States Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court, but in Article III it authorizes the Congress to fix the number of justices. The Judiciary Act of 1789 called for the appointment of six justices. As the country grew geographically, Congress increased the number of justices to correspond with the growing number of judicial circuits. In 1807, the court was expanded to seven members, allowing Thomas Jefferson to appoint Thomas Todd as a new Justice. The expansion to nine members in 1837 allowed Andrew Jackson to appoint John Catron, and Martin Van Buren to appoint John McKinley; and the addition of a tenth seat in 1863 allowed Abraham Lincoln to name Stephen Johnson Field to the Court. However, at the request of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act (1866) which provided that the next three justices to retire would not be replaced; thus, the size of the Court should have eventually reached seven by attrition. Consequently, one seat was removed in 1866 and a second in 1867. However, this law did not play out to completion, for in the Judiciary Act of 1869,[25] also known as the Circuit Judges Act, the number of justices was again set at nine, where it has since remained. The new seat created in 1869 was filled the following year by Ulysses S. Grant's appointment of Joseph P. Bradley - the last justice to be appointed to a newly created seat on the Court.