John Jay was the first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.
President George Washington nominated Jay in September 1789, shortly after the Judiciary Act of 1789 created the federal judicial structure. The Senate confirmed him, and Jay took office on October 19, 1789. He served until 1795.
Jay was a prominent revolutionary-era statesman from New York. He helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War, co-wrote essays in The Federalist Papers, and served as the first U.S. secretary of foreign affairs under the Confederation government.
The early Supreme Court handled a very small caseload compared with the modern Court. Jay’s tenure included only a handful of major decisions, and he later resigned to become governor of New York. John Marshall, often associated with the Court’s expansion of judicial authority, was the fourth chief justice, not the first.