Who was the first Chief Justice of the United States?

President George Washington appointed John Jay of New York as the first Chief Justice in 1789. The Supreme Court had little work in its early years; in its first term it heard no cases at all.

Jay was a diplomat as much as a judge. He helped negotiate the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, and while still Chief Justice he negotiated the 1794 treaty with Britain known as the Jay Treaty.

He also wrote five of The Federalist Papers. Jay left the Court in 1795 to become governor of New York, where he signed a law for the gradual abolition of slavery in the state.