After having been reelected for a second term in 1937, President Roosevelt took it a sign that the public was all for the New Deal and wanted to him to proceed. Roosevelt planned to do just this but saw the nine judges sitting on the Supreme Court as the roadblocks to success.
The Supreme Court at this time was made up of ultraconservatives who thought it was their civic duty to prevent Roosevelt's "socialistic" reforms. The Supreme Court judges were old, most of them over the age of seventy, and none had been appointed by Roosevelt. Although judges are allowed to serve until death, Roosevelt was anxious to get them out of their positions of power.
In one of the more costly moves of his career, Roosevelt declared he wanted a bill passed that would allow him to add a new justice for every justice over the age of seventy. His declaration shocked the public and Congress and caused Roosevelt to henceforth be seen under a socialist light. Many people saw this as a sign of his intentions to become a dictator.
Although his proposed legislation never came to pass, the threat of it was enough to make Justice Owen J. Roberts, a conservative, begin siding with liberal policies. This allowed for several rulings in Roosevelt's favor, including the state minimum wage for woman, the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act.
Roosevelt may have lost public respect by his blatant attempt to take over the Supreme Court, but in the end everything turned out in his favor. Not only did the Supreme Court pass reform bills, but a slew of deaths and resignations* gave Roosevelt the opportunity to appoint nine judges, a feat unseen since Washing's time.
*Resignations most likely occurred due to a bill passed by Congress which agreed to full pay for justices over the age of seventy who retired.
Also, apparently FDR's showdown with the Supreme Court was so epic that there's a book about it http://www.amazon.com/Supreme-Power-Franklin-Roosevelt-Court/dp/B0058M79UO
ReplyDeleteIn Roosevelt's first term, Supreme Court Justices had struck down some of Roosevelt's New Deal measures. These measures were supposed to help the economy during the Great Depression recover. I wonder why it was in the court justices' interests to act as obstructionists in such a dire time.
ReplyDeleteThe main block that Roosevelt faced in the Supreme Court was that of the Four Horsemen. The Four Horsemen was the nickname given to conservative justices Pierce Butler, Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter. They were strongly opposed to Roosevelt's New Deal, and voided acts such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Coal Mining Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act. They believed that the government shouldn't regulate the economy. Roosevelt's eventual solution to this problem was court-packing, or hiring more justices to destroy the Four Horsemen's majority.
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