the seventy-four years between 1894 and 1968. For perspective, however, it is worth noting that for most of the nineteenth century, the Senate had rejected or otherwise blocked an average of nearly one out of every three nominees to the Court.[131]
VII. 1937, FDR, and the Court: Existential Challenges}
Populist and Progressive critiques of the Court continued to circulate through the early decades of the twentieth century. By 1936, when the nation was in the grip of the Great Depression, these criticisms gained new salience. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt won reelection to a second term by an overwhelming margin, he turned his attention to the Court. In a series of decisions in 1935 and 1936, the Court had invalidated key New Deal legislation introduced by the Roosevelt Administration and supported by Democrats in Congress.[132] “A majority of the Court seemed to have turned decisively against the Administration’s programs,” notes one prominent casebook, adding that “constitutional challenges to a new spate of laws—the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act—loomed in the coming months.”[133]
In February 1937, Roosevelt presented a package of reforms to Congress that he described as a remedy for overcrowded federal court dockets. The proposal authorized the President to appoint one additional judge to the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, to supplement any federal judge who reached the age of seventy and did not retire. The size of the Court would be limited to fifteen Justices. “The significant fact was that the plan would permit the president to appoint six new Supreme Court justices, and thus to insure approval of the New Deal programs. It was, as it was called, a ‘court-packing plan.’”[134] On March 9, 1937, Roosevelt took to the national airwaves to present the reforms to the American people in a “Fireside Chat.”
Roosevelt’s plan sparked a robust national discussion about the Court, its decisions, and its and the President’s respective roles in the constitutional system. “Day after day for the next half-year, stories about the Supreme Court conflict rated banner headlines.”[135]
The question was debated at town meetings in New England, at crossroads country stores in North Carolina, at a large rally around the Tulsa courthouse, by the Chatterbox Club of Rochester, New York, the Thursday Study Club of La Crosse, Wisconsin, the Veteran Fire Fighters’ Association of New Orleans, and the Baptist Young People’s Union of Lime Rock, Rhode Island. In Beaumont, Texas, a movie
