7/27/2019 Court Packing

1/3

COURT PACKING

EMBOLDENED by his landslide electoral victory in the election of 1936 and frustratedwith an old, conservative Supreme Court, to which he had yet been able to appoint a

justice and that he perceived was intent on slowing down the progress of the New Deal,

President Roosevelt made a bold and perhaps miscalculated decision to direct aninternal shift in the power of the judicial branch.

In a private meeting with cabinet members and the SenateDemocratic Leadership, Roosevelt announced a plan tointroduce legislation that would reform the federal judiciary.Under the guise of easing the backlog of cases that faced the"aged, overworked justices," Roosevelt intended to askCongress for the power to appoint one additional judge to thefederal judiciary (including the Supreme Court) for every justicewho had reached the age of seventy but declined to retire. While

his ostensible purpose was to increase the efficiency of the judiciary, it was clear that Roosevelt was targeting six of the nineSupreme Court justices who had challenged his domesticprograms.

The make-up of the Hughes Court when Roosevelt took officewas relatively balanced. Of the nine justices, the conservative coalition of McReynolds,Van Devanter, Sutherland and Butler often clashed with the liberal justices, Brandeis,Stone and Cardozo, with Justice Owen Roberts and Chief Justice Charles Evansremaining more or less moderate. While at first the Court had accepted most of Roosevelt's programs, in the previous two years, led by Chief Justice Hughes, it hadruled in several cases that the executive branch had unconstitutionally assumed powersreserved for the legislature. The Court invalidated portions of New Deal measuresincluding, in Schecter v. United States, the price-fixing powers of Title I of the NIRA andalso in U.S. v. Butler. Additionally, the court had abrogated the Bitumonious CoalConservation Act (BCC) (also called "Little NIRA") and portions of the Agricultural

Adjustment Act, among others. While angry over what he saw in those cases as anattempt to undermine his program, when conceiving his court packing plan Rooseveltwas perhaps most concerned with the Court's impending decisions on the Wagner Act(National Labor Relations Act) and the Social Security Act.

March 9, 1937Listen | Text

"The balance of power...has been tipped out of

balance by the Courts indirect contradiction of thehigh purposes of theframers of theConstitution. It is my

purpose to restore that balance"

http://start%28%27fdr_court_fireside.html%27%29/http://start%28%27fdr_court_fireside.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27court_fireside_text.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27court_fireside_text.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27court_fireside_text.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27court_fireside_text.html%27%29/http://start%28%27fdr_court_fireside.html%27%29/

7/27/2019 Court Packing

2/3

Validating the concerns of many who felt that theexecutive was attempting to assume too muchpower and infringing on the independence of theother two branches, the judicial reorganizationplan sparked intense opposition and mobilized

conservative New Deal foes. Adding fuel to thefire was a series of political miscalculations by thepresident, costly mistakes that would eventuallylead to the end of the New Deal. Angered thatthey had not been consulted prior to hisannouncement and aggravated by what they saw

as territorial encroachment, Senate Democrats provided some of the strongestresistance to his proposal. But the negative response was not from Congress alone.The Chief Justice fought vigorously against reorganization, at one point providing courtrecords as evidence to debunk Roosevelt's criticism and demonstrate the Court'sefficiency. Neither the media nor the American public stayed silent long, using a barrage

of editorials and letters to Confgress, respectively, as their battleweapons.

But just as the opposition was running strong, an unexpectedturn of events took control of the reigns. In March the SupremeCourt upheld as constitutional both the Wagner Act and theSocial Security Act and in May Justice Van Devanter announced his retirement. The appearance of Court support for his policies and an opportunity for a Supreme Courtappointment took the steam out of Roosevelt's court packing plan and the measure wasallowed to die in committee, remanded there by a 70-20 Senate vote.

Roosevelt had a Court he could live with (he would eventually appoint eight justiceswhile in office) but the damage had been done. The election of 1936, in which he hadcampaigned against some anti-New Deal Democrats, along his proposal and politicalhandling of judicial reorganization had secured him numerous enemies.

The energized conservative opposition succeeded in blockingmuch of his remaining domestic programs, and as his relationswith Congress declined, so did the New Deal. Furthermore,while the New Deal was built on deficit spending, one of thepillars of FDR's economic policy was his belief in a balancedbudget. As he cut federal spending, the nation fell into aneconomic recession, as bad as any it had experienced, that sawunemployment jump to 20 percent while production andindustrial output declined. Although a few laws would be passedin 1938, the politics and economics of the last years of thedecade brought the New Deal to a close. In his annual message

to Congress in 1939, the president shifted his focus to the tense international scene andof his requested $9 billion budget, almost one-sixth would go to defense. Contrary to the

The Hughes CourtMore

"Shall the Supreme Court be turnedinto the personal organ of the

President?...If Congress answersyes, the principle of an impartial andindependent judiciary will be lost in

this country." - Chicago TribuneThe Nation | NY Times

Chicago Tribune

click to view image full size

http://start2%28%27hughes_court.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27hughes_court.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27docs/nation_court_ed.html')http://start2%28%27docs/nation_court_ed.html')http://start2%28%27%27%29/http://start2%28%27%27%29/http://start2%28%27%27%29/http://start2%28%27docs/trib_ed_2.7.37.html')http://start2%28%27docs/trib_ed_2.7.37.html')http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27hughes_court.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27hughes_court.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27hughes_court.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27hughes_court.html%27%29/http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27toons/court3.html')http://start2%28%27docs/trib_ed_2.7.37.html')http://start2%28%27%27%29/http://start2%28%27docs/nation_court_ed.html')http://start2%28%27hughes_court.html%27%29/

7/27/2019 Court Packing

3/3

style and energy with which it had arrived, the New Deal slipped out of the decadeunnoticed. Full economic recovery would come until World War II, but psychologically,the nation had recovered long ago.