Interesting question. I thought it would be a simple matter of looking at my well-worn pamphlet in which is printed the US Constitution. But I was wrong.
Article 3, which establishes the judiciary, refers to the "Judges" of both the supreme and inferior courts. It is only in Article 1, Section 4, Cluase 6, that you find the term Justice: "When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside. . .."
Further in Article 2, Section 2, clause 2, that the President "shall nominate . . . Judges of the supreme(sic) Court. . .." There is no Constitutional provision for the President to appoint judges of the "inferior courts". My assumption is that when Congress created the inferior Federal Courts they authorized the president to nominate the judges therefor.
US Code Title 28, section 1, provides The Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom shall constitute a quorum. So, while Chief Justice is somewhat etched into the Constitution, the titles of the associate justices is simply statutory in nature. I suppose one could make an argument that there is nothing in the Constitution to specify that the Chief Justice referred to in Article 2 has nothing to do with the Supreme Court, which is composed of judges, but I suspect that argument wouldn't get very far.
Section 43 provides for the courts of appeals that "(t)he President shall appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, circuit judges . . .."
My guess is that the use of the word judges for members of the Supreme Court in the Constitution is more or less an error, but of course there can be no "error" in the Constitution, and that the FFs had decided on the term of justice for the Supreme Court, based upon specific reference to Chief Justice in Article 2. I believe the use of justice parallels what is found in England.
This is probably boring as all holy hell to those who aren't US attorneys or like me a self-taught scholar of our Constitution.
TEd who secretly wanted to be an attorney but who never worked hard enough to get into law school
