Subsequent scholarship has cast doubt on this view of events. Parrish (decision announced March 29, 1937), the case that brought the Lochnerera to a close, leading the Court to uphold a Washington State minimum-wage law. While Roosevelt lost the battle, it is sometimes said that he won the war with the “switch in time that saved nine.” Allegedly, Justice Owen Roberts (1875–1955) changed his vote in West Coast Hotel v. Even Roosevelt’s own Vice-President, John Nance Garner, opposed the plan. A coalition Democrats and Republicans believed, despite Roosevelt’s assurances to the contrary, that it was a dangerous attack on the independence of the Supreme Court. Roosevelt’s plan was rejected by Congress. He described the American government as a “three-horse team” that had to pull together “in unison.” The Court, rather than confining itself to the Constitution, had set itself up as a “super-legislature.” The time had come, he said, “to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself.” Ironically, the court-packing plan Cummings proposed was inspired by a similar plan proposed by George Sutherland when he was attorney general under Woodrow Wilson.ĭuring this address Roosevelt argued that the Court needed justices with a more “modern” view of the Constitution. In the face of these judicial setbacks, FDR deputized his attorney general, Homer Cummings (1870–1956), to craft a plan to make the Court more congenial to Roosevelt’s policies.
U.S., in which the Court unanimously struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act, the centerpiece of the New Deal.
The most important decision, and the one directly leading to FDR’s proposal, was S chechter Poultry v. Four justices-Pierce Butler (1866–1939), James Clark McReynolds (1862–1946), George Sutherland 1862–1942), and Willis Van Devanter (1859–1941)-consistently did so, earning them the epithet the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from Roosevelt’s supporters. During Roosevelt’s first term, the Supreme Court had struck down several pieces of New Deal legislation, often by 5–4 votes. In this one, he announced his proposal (the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill) to add one additional justice, but no more than six total, to the Supreme Court for every justice who was over seventy. On March 9, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered one of his famous Fireside Chats.
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