History of the Supreme Court to today
from spudart.org

With Sandra Day O'Connor retiring, everyone is freaking out about how George W. Bush gets to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice. But c'mon people, it's about time we get a new justice. The last one chosen was in 1994--nine years ago! The only longest appointment drought was from 1812-1823--eleven years.

Plus George W. Bush is the only two-term president who hasn't made a court appiontment yet. There's only been four presidents who have not made a Supreme Court appointment:

• William H. Harrison who was president for less than one month.
• Zachary Taylor who was president for only two years
• Andrew Johnson who got shafted by Congress who lowered the number of Justices in 1866 and 1867 so he couldn't appoint any
• Jimmy Carter who just had bad luck

Here's graph featuring the complete listing of all the associate and chief justices on the Supreme Court of America. And a pdf version. You can leave comments on this page.

Congress determines the number of justices on the Court. There have been nine justices on the Court since 1869. There were originally six until 1807 when a seventh justice was added. In 1837 an eighth and ninth were added with a tenth in 1863. The Judicial Circuits Act of 1866 called for the removal of three seats as justices retired. This act was passed to deny President Andrew Johnson from making any Supreme Court appointments. One seat was removed in 1866 and a second in 1867. Before a third seat was removed, the Congress passed the Circuit Judges Act of 1869 restoring the number of seats to nine. Since 1869, the Court has been kept at nine, both for political reasons as well as practical necessity. Subsequent attempts to change the number of justices have been rejected.

The last notable attempt to alter the number of justices was on February 5, 1937 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed an increase in the size of the Court to fifteen justices, one additional seat for each justice over age 70, to deal with a Court overturning of Roosevelt's New Deal legislation. Many politicians at the time and historians since scorned this plan to "pack the court". The proposal failed on July 22 when the United States Senate voted against it.

Sources:
• U.S. Supreme Court Justices on MSN Encarta
• Presidents of the United States on whitehouse.gov
• Supreme Court on wikipedia.