5 February 1937 A.D. Power-Lustocracy: Roosevelt Announces “Court-Packing Plan”
Editors. “Roosevelt
announces `court-packing’ plan.” History.com. N.d. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/roosevelt-announces-court-packing-plan. Accessed 4 Feb 2015.
Roosevelt announces "court-packing" plan
On February 5, 1937,
President Franklin
Roosevelt announces a controversial
plan to expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, allegedly to make it
more efficient. Critics immediately charged that Roosevelt was trying to
"pack" the court and thus neutralize Supreme Court justices hostile
to his New Deal.
During the previous two
years, the high court had struck down several key pieces of New Deal
legislation on the grounds that the laws delegated an unconstitutional amount
of authority to the executive branch and the federal government. Flushed with
his landslide reelection in 1936, President Roosevelt issued a proposal in
February 1937 to provide retirement at full pay for all members of the court
over 70. If a justice refused to retire, an "assistant" with full
voting rights was to be appointed, thus ensuring Roosevelt a liberal majority.
Most Republicans and many Democrats in Congress opposed the so-called
"court-packing" plan.
In April, however, before
the bill came to a vote in Congress, two Supreme Court justices came over to
the liberal side and by a narrow majority upheld as constitutional the National
Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. The majority opinion
acknowledged that the national economy had grown to such a degree that federal
regulation and control was now warranted. Roosevelt's reorganization plan was
thus unnecessary, and in July the Senate struck it down by a vote of 70 to 22.
Soon after, Roosevelt had the opportunity to nominate his first Supreme Court
justice, and by 1942 all but two of the justices were his appointees.
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