Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

City: Boston

State: Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is the Commonwealth's highest appellate court and is among the oldest appellate courts in continuous existence in the Western Hemisphere. The court traces its lineage back to 1692, when the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted legislation to create a superior court of judicature for the province. It was not until 1699 that the Superior Court of Judicature was formally established. This court continued to operate until the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. The new constitution retained the provincial courts, renaming the Superior Court of Judicature the Supreme Judicial Court, but it was not until July 1782 that the General Court enacted legislation formally establishing the Supreme Judicial Court comprised of one chief justice and four associate justices. In 1800, the General Court increased the number of justices to seven, and in 1804 reduced it to five. Between 1804 and the end of the Civil War, the General Court altered the number of justices five times, but the number never went below four or over seven.

Conrad Reno, Memoirs of the Judiciary and the Bar of New England for the Nineteenth Century (Boston: Century Memorial, 1901) 1:70-71; Albert Mason, "Judicial History of Massachusetts," chap. CXXXIV in The New England States, ed. William T. Davis (Boston: D. H. Hurd, [1897], 3:1772-784.