Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States
- ↑ Id. at 41.
- ↑ Kalman Testimony, supra note 24, at 1–3 (noting that, although Roosevelt’s Court fight has often “been portrayed as the idiotic brainchild of a hubristic FDR destined from its inception for defeat, … the history of the Court fight tells a different story” and Roosevelt could reasonably have anticipated some success); see also Gregory A. Caldeira, Public Opinion and the U.S. Supreme Court: FDR’s Court-Packing Plan, 81 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 1139, 1148–49 (1987) (finding that public opinion did not turn decisively against Roosevelt’s proposal until the Court showed greater support for the New Deal); William D. Blake, “Justice Under the Constitution, Not Over It”: Public Perceptions of FDR’s Court-Packing Plan, 49 Presidential Stud. Q. 204, 205 (2019) (finding broad support among the general public for more liberal constitutional rules in 1937 but less support for Court-expansion as a means for getting that outcome).
- ↑ See Leuchtenburg, supra note 22, at 137–39; Shesol, supra note 22, at 467; 5 Historical Statistics of the United States 201, tbl. Eb296-308 (Susan B. Carter et al. eds., 2006) (showing that the Democrats controlled the House 331–89 and the Senate 76–16 over Republicans in 1937–38).
- ↑ Kalman Testimony, supra note 24, at 17.
- ↑ Leuchtenburg, supra note 22, at 138; Shesol, supra note 22, at 315 (“The idea of giving any president, particularly Roosevelt, the authority to remake the Supreme Court virtually overnight was abhorrent to Senate progressives.”).
- ↑ Letter from Charles Evans Hughes, C.J., to Burton K. Wheeler, U.S. Sen. (Mar. 21, 1937), reprinted in S. Rep. No. 75-711, app. c at 40 (1937) [hereinafter Hughes Letter].
- ↑ See also Kalman Testimony, supra note 24, at 21; Laura Kalman, Court Packing and Its Legacy 498 (2021) (unpublished manuscript) (on file with author) (observing that for much of the spring and summer of 1937, it appeared that Roosevelt might succeed to some degree in enlarging the Court).
- ↑ See Leuchtenburg, supra note 22, at 135 (“In the first week, numbers of Democratic Senators announced themselves for the bill.”); Shesol, supra note 22, at 514.
- ↑ See Leuchtenburg, supra note 22 at 135, 137–54 (“Despite all the antagonism, though, it still seemed highly likely in the last week of March [1937] that FDR’s proposal would be adopted.”).
- ↑ See NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 49 (1937) (upholding the National Labor Relations Act); Steward Mach. Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548, 578–98 (1937) (upholding provisions of the Social Security Act); Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619, 639–46 (1937) (same); W. Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379, 390–400 (1937) (upholding a state minimum wage law for women).
- ↑ Compare Joseph Alsop & Turner Catledge, The 168 Days 141–43 (1938) (“It seems probable … that all the justices realized that their only chance to save the Court lay in more self-reversals.”), and Laura Kalman, The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism 19 (1996) (arguing that the Court “blinked” in response to the Court-packing plan), with Barry Cushman, Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution 3–7 (1998) (challenging the view that the Court’s decisions were a “political response to political pressure”), and Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law, Ch. 8, § 8-6, 449 n.18 (1978) (casting doubt on the myth that a Justice changed his vote in response to the 1937 Court-packing plan).
- ↑ See Friedman, supra note 22, at 226 (“The Court’s apparent change of direction [in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish and two weeks later in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.] was a major turning point for the plan, and everyone knew it.”); Leuchtenburg, supra note 22, at 143 (arguing that Justice “Roberts’ ‘somersault’ [in West Coast Hotel] gravely damaged the chances of the Court plan.”).
- ↑ See S. Rep. No. 75-711, at 9 (1937); Shesol, supra note 22, at 467.
- ↑ S. Rep. No. 75-711, at 23.
- ↑ Id. at 3, 8.
- ↑ Id. at 14.
- ↑ Kalman, supra note 40, at 417–19.
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