What was court packing scheme




















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How to use Roosevelt's Court packing plan in a sentence Unless there is a court decision that changes our law, we are OK. Others claimed that it was not the Supreme Court justices who were overturning Roosevelt's New Deal laws, but the Constitution itself. Perhaps the most persuasive witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee never appeared in person. This was Chief Justice Hughes who entered the political fray by submitting a letter that was read to the committee by Senator Burton K.

Wheeler D-Mont. Hughes stated in his letter that the Supreme Court "is fully abreast of its work. The chief justice argued, "There would be more judges to hear, more judges to confer, more judges to discuss, more judges to be convinced and to decide.

In the midst of the "court-packing" fight, a series of unexpected events occurred that finally sank FDR's court-reform bill.

On March 29, , the Supreme Court reversed itself and upheld a state minimum-wage law very similar to laws that the court had previously struck down. This case was decided by another 5—4 vote.

But this time the four conservative justices were in the minority. These cases, too, were decided by slim 5—4 majorities. For some reason, Justice Owen Roberts decided to switch sides in these cases, thus providing the three liberals along with Chief Justice Hughes a bare one-vote majority.

These decisions weakened the argument that younger, more liberal justices were needed on the Supreme Court. The press quickly called the sudden shift by Justice Roberts "the switch in time that saved nine. Despite these developments, Roosevelt refused to withdraw his court-reform bill.

While he did agree to compromise, FDR's chances of getting the bill through Congress began to look poor. The Senate Judiciary Committee, although dominated by Democrats, issued a report that recommended against the president's proposal. The last hope of the bill's supporters rested with the persuasive powers of the Senate Democratic Majority Leader, Joe Robinson. When he died suddenly before the full Senate voted, the court-reform bill was doomed.

By late July , Roosevelt gave in and agreed to drop the bill. Over the span of his remaining three terms in office, Roosevelt got to name a total of eight new justices to the Supreme Court. In the end, he did get to "pack" the court with men of his choosing. This "Roosevelt Court" took a more liberal direction in interpreting the Constitution, at least for a while.

But the question remains, even today, whether the Supreme Court can truly be an independent body completely separated from political influences. During the "court-packing" episode, a number of different Supreme Court reforms were discussed. This activity will enable the class to decide if any of these reforms should be adopted today.

Alumni Volunteers The Boardroom Alumni. Curriculum Materials. Add Event. Main Menu Home. The Court Reform Bill In fact, previous conservative Republican presidents had appointed a large majority of all federal court judges who also served life terms. Bolstering their position was a legal regime overseen by the US Supreme Court.

In a line of cases following the end of Reconstruction, the Court had built a doctrinal superstructure conducive to modern laissez-faire industrialism and hostile to the claims of laborers and the indigent. Legal concepts like substantive due process had exalted private property and freedom of contract while limiting the power of government to regulate or otherwise interfere with entrepreneurship.

Roosevelt anticipated a recalcitrant Supreme Court when he took office. Several decisions during the previous decade had applied substantive due process—the idea that certain rights such as property rights are so fundamental as to be beyond governmental regulation—to strike down state laws that regulated businesses by imposing extra costs upon them, for example, through minimum wages or safety rules.

Shortly prior to the election, as if in warning to Roosevelt, the Court had invalidated on substantive due process grounds an Oklahoma law requiring the licensing of ice-making facilities. A wall seemingly had been installed around private business and government told to keep out. Of particular concern to the New Dealers was a four-judge coterie on the Court, Justices Butler, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Van Devanter, who collectively embraced a settled anti-regulatory ideology hostile to interventionist government.

Each of the so-called Four Horsemen was over the age of seventy in All four regularly voted in a block wherever substantive due process or delegation of powers issues were implicated, needing only a single recruit from the remaining five justices to defeat governmental initiatives that burdened private enterprise.

The other justices were less predictable. Justice Brandeis, the eldest, was a Wilson appointee with strong progressive leanings but a predilection for limited government and small business. The chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, a more conservative figure, had nevertheless served as governor of New York and was open-minded about regulation.

Two other New Yorkers, Justices Cardozo and Stone, were genuine intellectuals who brought both compassion and respect for prior precedent to their deliberations. Owen Roberts, the youngest of the justices, was a career prosecutor and a Hoover appointee from Pennsylvania at age fifty-eight with no prior involvement in any legislature or business and thus an unknown on the constitutional issues of the day.

His vote soon turned out to be critical. During the first twenty-four months after Roosevelt was elected, his administration successfully steered clear of direct confrontation with the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, two decisions by the Court in upholding state-based regulations hinted that a majority of the justices were sensitive to the emergency. Significantly, Roberts had voted against the Four Horsemen in both cases, and in one of them, Nebbia v.

New York , he had written the majority opinion upholding price controls on the sale of milk. The resulting sense of relief among anxious New Dealers, however, proved premature. The vote was an overwhelming against the New Deal measure. Each of the decisions was unanimous.

Subsequent rulings included the invalidation of the wages-and-hours and price-control mechanisms of the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act , with Roberts the swing vote , invalidation of the processing tax in the Agricultural Adjustment Act , with Roberts writing for the majority , and vacatur of a New York State minimum wage law , Roberts again , a ruling with worrisome implications for a vast area of industrial regulation.

Roosevelt and his supporters looked on aghast at the path of destruction these decisions wreaked upon economic regulation generally and the New Deal in particular. President, they mean to destroy us. We will have to find a way to get rid of the present membership of the Supreme Court. It was not just a matter of finding the right wording and getting it through Congress or a constitutional convention. But even after the overwhelming victory by Roosevelt and the Democrats in the elections, the prospects of jurisdictional limitation seemed doubtful, particularly if the Court itself could ultimately rule on its constitutionality.

The most obvious other alternative was to change the composition of the Court. Getting the most elderly justices to retire and appointing friendly replacements would have been the ideal curative.



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