Dimensions of Conflict in the Court-Packing Controversy in America 1936-1937
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15633/fhc.3417Keywords:
Supreme Court, president, FDR, New Deal, ideology, reform, electoral mandate, leadership, failureAbstract
1936 brought a lot more than the re-election of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was also a year which brought a broad and radical challenge to the New Deal reform policies. American democracy demonstrated its complexity and unfinishedness. The conflict between FDR and the Supreme Court has many dimensions: institutional – conflict between the government (the president, Congress and the Administration) and the US Supreme Court over the range of powers of each actor; political – regarding the accountability of political elites; socio-economic – regarding the direction of development of American democracy; philosophical – over the meaning of liberty; legal – regarding the separation of powers between the levels of government; personal – between persons and personalities representing divergent visions of power; and historical – reviving the constitutional debates from the early republic. For some, the clash between FDR and the USSC touched the very essence of the representative democracy. After a year, the level of tensions subsided and all parties were scarred, yet the political system as such demonstrated its resilience. Its outcome to these days serves as a pretext for deliberations about the relations between leaders and followers. Events in America may be useful for all countries where the autonomy of the judicial branch of government becomes a political issue.
References
J. Alsop, T. Catledge, The 168 Days, Garden City, N.Y. 1938.
L. Baker, Back to Back: The Duel Between FDR and the Supreme Court, New York 1967.
J. M. Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and The Fox, New York 1956.
J. M. Burns, Packing the Court, New York 2009.
G. Caldeira, Public Opinion and the U.S. Supreme Court: FDR’s Courtpacking Plan, paper posted on-line, 2004, https://doi. org/10.2307/1962582.
A. Cohen, Nothing to Fear. FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America, New York 2010.
B. Cushman, The Court-packing Plan as Symptom, Casualty, and Cause of Gridlock, “Notre Dame Law Review”, vol. LXXXVIII, no. 5 (2013), pp. 2089−2106.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: a Profile, ed. W. Leuchtenburg, New York 1967.
R. D. Friedman, Chief Justice Hughes’ Letter on Court-packing, “The Journal of Supreme Court History”, vol. XXII, pp. 76−86, https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-5818.1997.tb00064.x.
J. Gibson, L. Spence, G. Caldeira, Measuring Attitudes Toward the United States Supreme Court, “American Journal of Political Science”, vol. XLVII, (April 2003), pp. 354−367, https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-5907.00025.
G. M. Gressley, Joseph C. O’Mahoney, FDR, and the Supreme Court, “Pacific Historical Review”, vol. XL (1971).
T. Gross, FDR’s Losing Battle to Pack the Supreme Court, interview with Jeff Shesol, April 13, 2010, Fresh Air 12:00 PM ET, https://www.npr. org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789097&t=1539535916281 (16.10.2019).
R. Heimlich, Judicial Review, FactTank. News in Numbers, Pew Research Center, 22.06.2011, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2011/06/22/ judicial-review/ (14.10.2018).
S. Jessee, N. Malhotra, Public (Mis)Perceptions of Supreme Court Ideology: a Method for Directly Comparing Citizens and Justices, “Public Opinion Quarterly”, vol. LXXVII, no. 2 (2013), pp. 619−634.
J. Kirkpatrick, FDR’s Court-packing Scheme: A Test of Democracy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Honors Thesis, 1990. Thesis paper 225 available at http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/uhp_theses (16.10.2019).
M. Lerner, The Unfinished Country, New York 1959.
L. Levine, C. Levine, The Fireside Conversations: America Responds to FDR during the Great Depression, Berkeley 2010.
G. McJimsey, The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lawrence 2010.
L. Patenaude, Court-packing Plan of 1937, Handbook of Texas Online, The Texas State Historical Association, 12.06.2010, https://tshaonline.org/ handbook/online/articles/jzc01 (14.01.2018).
J. Shesol, Supreme Power: Franklin Delano Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court, New York 2011.
B. Solomon, FDR vs. The Constitution, New York 2009. “Supreme Court Procedures”, United States Courts, https://www.uscourts.gov/ aboutfederal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/supreme-1 (28.02.2019).
E. White, The Constitution and the New Deal, Cambridge 2000.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions, and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
