1st United States Congress in the context of "Residence Act"

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party". In 1803, the court asserted itself the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.

Under Article Three of the United States Constitution, the composition and procedures of the Supreme Court were originally established by the 1st Congress through the Judiciary Act of 1789. The court consists of nine justices—the chief justice of the United States and eight associate justices—who meet at the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. Justices have lifetime tenure, meaning they remain on the court until they die, retire, resign, or are impeached and removed from office. When a vacancy occurs, the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints a new justice.

The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, a part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. It expresses the principle of federalism, whereby the federal government and the individual states share power, by mutual agreement. The Tenth Amendment prescribes that the federal government has only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and that all other powers not forbidden to the states by the Constitution are reserved to each state, or to the people.

The amendment, with origins before the American Revolution, was proposed by the 1st United States Congress in 1789 during its first term following the adoption of the Constitution. It was considered by many members as a prerequisite before they would ratify the Constitution, and particularly to satisfy demands of Anti-Federalists, who opposed the creation of a stronger federal government.

The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio and also known as the Ordinance of 1787), enacted July 13, 1787, was an organic act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States. It created the Northwest Territory, the new nation's first organized incorporated territories between British North America and the Great Lakes to the north and the Ohio River to the south. The upper Mississippi River formed the territory's western boundary. Pennsylvania was the eastern boundary.

In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolutionary War, Great Britain ceded the region to the United States. However, the Confederation Congress faced numerous problems gaining control of the land such as the unsanctioned movement of American settlers into the Ohio Valley; violent resistance from the region's indigenous peoples; the continued presence of British outposts in the region and an empty U.S. treasury. The ordinance superseded the Land Ordinance of 1784, which declared that states would one day be formed within the region, and the Land Ordinance of 1785, which described how the Confederation Congress would sell the land to private citizens. Designed to serve as a plan for the development and settlement of the region, the 1787 ordinance lacked a strong central government to implement it. That need was addressed shortly with the formation of the U.S. federal government in 1789. The First Congress reaffirmed the 1787 ordinance and, with slight modifications, renewed it with the Northwest Ordinance of 1789.

The Twenty-seventh Amendment (Amendment XXVII, also known as the Congressional Pay Amendment or the Congressional Compensation Act of 1789) to the United States Constitution states that any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of Congress may take effect only after the next election of the House of Representatives has occurred. It is the most recently adopted amendment but was one of the first proposed.

The 1st Congress submitted the amendment to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789, along with 11 other proposed amendments (Articles I–XII). The last ten Articles were ratified in 1791 to become the Bill of Rights, but the first two, the Twenty-seventh Amendment and the proposed Congressional Apportionment Amendment, were not ratified by enough states to come into force with them.

The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (originally titled Article the First) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that addresses the number of seats in the House of Representatives. It was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, but was never ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures. As Congress did not set a time limit for its ratification, the Congressional Apportionment Amendment is still pending before the states. As of 2025, it is one of six unratified amendments.

In the 1st United States Congress, James Madison put together a package of constitutional amendments designed to address the concerns of Anti-Federalists, who were suspicious of federal power under the new constitution. The Congressional Apportionment Amendment is the only one of the twelve amendments passed by Congress which was never ratified; ten amendments were ratified by 1791 as the Bill of Rights, while the other amendment (Article the Second) was later ratified as the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992. A majority of the states did ratify the Congressional Apportion Amendment and, by the end of 1791, the amendment was just one state short of adoption. However, no state has ratified the amendment since 1792.

James Monroe (/mənˈroʊ/ mən-ROH; April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) was an American Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. He was the last Founding Father to serve as president as well as the last president of the Virginia dynasty. Monroe was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and his presidency coincided with the Era of Good Feelings, concluding the First Party System era of American politics. He issued the Monroe Doctrine, a policy of limiting European colonialism in the Americas. Monroe previously served as Governor of Virginia, a member of the United States Senate, U.S. ambassador to France and Britain, the seventh secretary of state, and the eighth secretary of war.

During the American Revolutionary War, he served in the Continental Army. From 1780 to 1783, Monroe studied law under Thomas Jefferson and subsequently served as a delegate to both the Continental Congress and the Virginia Ratifying Convention. He opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution. In 1790, Monroe won election to the Senate where he became a leader of the Democratic-Republican Party. He left the Senate in 1794 to serve as President George Washington's ambassador to France but was recalled by Washington in 1796. Monroe won the election as Governor of Virginia in 1799 and strongly supported Jefferson's candidacy in the 1800 presidential election.

The 100 seats in the United States Senate are divided into three classes for the purpose of determining which seats will be up for election in any two-year cycle, with only one class being up for election at a time. With senators being elected to fixed terms of six years, the classes allow about a third of the seats to be up for election in any presidential or midterm election year instead of having all 100 be up for election at the same time every six years. The seats are also divided in such a way that any given state's two senators are in different classes so that each seat's term ends in different years. Class 1 and class 2 consist of 33 seats each, while class 3 consists of 34 seats. Elections for class 1 seats took place in 2024, and elections for classes 2 and 3 will take place in 2026 and 2028, respectively.

The three classes were established by Article I, Section 3, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The actual division was originally performed by the Senate of the 1st Congress in May 1789 by lot. Whenever a new state subsequently joined the union, its two Senate seats were assigned to two different classes by a random draw, while keeping the three classes as close to the same number as possible.