FDR and the Supreme Court

Introduction

The large struggle between the leader and the Supreme Court in 1937 stirred the national strong feelings to odd depths because it conveyed Franklin D. Roosevelt's crusade against despondency into collision with one of our most hallowed traditions. And after a lapse of twenty years it continues high on the register of the most spectacular challenges in our legal history.

Toxic Relationship between FDR and the Supreme Court

In 1937, a few months after FDR landslide re-election to a second term, Franklin Roosevelt set out on one of the boldest and most dangerous courses of his presidency. The conservative Supreme Court had currently hit down a series of New Deal programs. Roosevelt dreaded that the mostly aged justices would proceed on to destroy the rest of his legislative achievements before he would have a possibility to make any new appointments. As an outcome, he suggested a “reform” of the courts that would, amidst other things, have supplemented a supplemented justice to the Supreme Court for every present fairness over the age of 70. It became the most contentious proposal of his presidency — so much so that it almost paralyzed his administration for over a year and decimated much of the fragile unity of the popular coalition.

Jeff Shesol (the scribe of “Mutual Contempt,” an account of the relationship between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy) is not the first to chronicle what became known as the “court-packing” controversy, but “Supreme Power” is by far the most detailed — and most riveting — account of this exceptional event. Shesol presents a disclosing portrait of the “nine vintage men,” as opponents of the court described them. At the identical time, he presents in great minutia Roosevelt's own anguish over what he advised the court's reactionary views. Both edges of the controversy were the goods of deep conviction. The court was on a operation to battle what the justices examined as a large hazard to the rudimentary principles of American democracy. The White House was on its own mission to save not just the New Deal, but furthermore its restoration of the nation.

Within the Roosevelt management, the suggestion to enlarge the court appeared eminently reasonable. There was no legal bar to increasing the number of fairness. All other assesses — legal amendments, legislative remedies, mandatory retirements and similar suggestions — seemed far more fundamental and far less expected to succeed. Court packing appeared the most moderate and cautious of the routes accessible — but still, they recognized, a tremendously risky one.

And the hazards, it rapidly became clear, were much greater than Roosevelt and his advisers had imagined. It was not astonishing that the court-packing argument would arouse the rage of the right, which currently detested Roosevelt and the New Deal and accepted the White House was building a dictatorship. More startling to the leader was the outrage from within his own party — even amidst numerous staunch progressives — and the lukewarm loyalty he obtained even from those who acquiesced ...