Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States
2768–73 (arguing that the 1863 example can be seen as “the last example of the circuit-riding system at work” but asserting that subsequent changes were not tied to the circuit system).
- ↑ 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857); see Barry Friedman, The History of the Countermajoritarian Difficulty, Part One: The Road to Judicial Supremacy, 73 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 333, 415–17 (1998).
- ↑ See Act of March 3, 1863, ch. 100, § 1, 12 Stat. 794, 794; Crowe, supra note 15, at 138–9, 143–46.
- ↑ See Judiciary Act of 1866, ch. 210, 14 Stat. 209, 209. As in 1802, Congress did not terminate the position of any Justice but instead provided that the next three vacancies would not be filled. Id.
- ↑ See 3 Warren, supra note 13, at 143–45. The reduction to seven Justices was not tied to the then-existing circuit court system; see Braver, supra note 9, at 2785 (“Reducing the number of Supreme Court Justices meant that the circuit courts would not be adequately staffed.”).
- ↑ See Circuit Judges Act of 1869, ch. 22, 16 Stat. 44, 44; 3 Warren, supra note 13, at 223.
- ↑ See Crowe, supra note 15, at 153–59 (noting the 1866 and 1869 changes are often seen as partisan attempts to manipulate the Court’s size but urging that the laws had more neutral purposes).
- ↑ There has been a great deal of scholarship on President Roosevelt’s Court-packing plan. For a few of the accounts, see Barry Friedman, The Will of the People 217–29 (2009); William E. Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn 82–162 (1996); Jeff Shesol, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court (2010).
- ↑ See, e.g., Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, 317 (1936) (invalidating the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act); A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 542–51 (1935) (holding unconstitutional provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act). These decisions by the Court also followed decades in which the Court struck down numerous laws enacted to protect workers, consumers, and the public. See, e.g., Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 64–65 (1905) (invalidating a New York state maximum-hour and minimum-wage law regulating the baking industry on grounds that it violated the freedom to contract); Adkins v. Child.’s Hosp. of D.C., 261 U.S. 525, 561–63 (1923) (holding that a federal minimum-wage law for women was unconstitutional because it violated the freedom of contract and did not advance a compelling state interest).
- ↑ In 1936, Roosevelt won every state in the electoral college other than Maine and Vermont, with 61% of the popular vote, and Democrats won an overwhelming majority in Congress. E.g., Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 6 (June 25, 2021) (written testimony of Laura Kalman, University of California, Santa Barbara) [hereinafter Kalman Testimony], https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Kalman-06.25.2021.pdf (“Roosevelt had won every state except Maine and Vermont and nearly 61% of the popular vote. If Americans had voted against Herbert Hoover in 1932, they had given FDR a mandate in 1936, as in the 1934 midterm elections.”).
- ↑ See Message from the President of the United States: A Recommendation to Reorganize the Judicial Branch of the Federal Government, H.R. Doc. No. 75-142, at 9–10 (1937).
- ↑ See Tara Leigh Grove, The Article II Safeguards of Federal Jurisdiction, 112 Colum. L. Rev. 250, 269–73 (2012).
- ↑ Id. at 273 (quoting Memorandum from Warner W. Gardner, Att’y, Dep’t of Just., to Stanley Forman Reed, U.S. Solic. Gen. 56–57, 65 (Dec. 10, 1936)).
- ↑ See H.R. Doc. No. 75-142, at 1–3 (“The Judiciary has often found itself handicapped by insufficient personnel[.]”).
- ↑ See Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat (Mar. 9, 1937), Am. Presidency Proj., https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/fireside-chat-17 (last visited Nov. 14, 2021).
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Reorganization of the Federal Judiciary, Part 1: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 75th Cong. 38 (1937) (statement of Robert H. Jackson, Assistant Att’y Gen. of the United States).
- ↑ Id. at 40.
96 | December 2021
