Chief Justices of The United States - Bio, Quotes, Books, Resources

The 17 Chief Justices of the United States

The Chief Justice of the United States, often improperly referred to as "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court," is the head of the United States federal court system (the judicial branch of the federal government of the United States) and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. He is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight are the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Throughout our history, we have had seventeen Chief Justices, all men.

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Chief Justice	Nominated by	Took Oath	Service Ended
John Jay	George Washington	Oct. 19, 1789	June 29, 1795
John Rutledge	George Washington	Aug. 12, 1795	Dec. 15, 1795
Oliver Ellsworth	George Washington	Mar. 8, 1796	Dec. 15, 1800
John Marshall	John Adams	Feb. 4, 1801	July 6, 1835
Roger B. Taney	Andrew Jackson	Mar. 28, 1836	Oct. 12, 1864
Salmon P. Chase	Abraham Lincoln	Dec. 15, 1864	May 7, 1873
Morrison R. Waite	Ulysses S. Grant	Mar. 4, 1874	Mar. 23, 1888
Melville W. Fuller	Grover Cleveland	Oct. 8, 1888	July 4, 1910
Edward D. White	William Howard Taft	Dec. 19, 1910	May 19, 1921
William Howard Taft	Warren Harding	July 11, 1921	Feb. 3, 1930
Charles E. Hughes	Herbert Hoover	Feb. 24, 1930	June 30, 1941
Harlan F. Stone	Franklin D. Roosevelt	July 3, 1941	Apr. 22, 1946
Frederick M. Vinson	Harry S. Truman	June 24, 1946	Sept. 8, 1953
Earl Warren	Dwight D. Eisenhower	Oct. 5, 1953	June 23, 1969
Warren Burger	Richard M. Nixon	June 23, 1969	Sept. 26, 1986
William Rehnquist	Ronald Reagan	Sept. 26, 1986	Sept. 3, 2005
John G. Roberts	George W. Bush	Sept. 29, 2005	Now Serving