Franklin Delano Roosevelt A Man of the Century

More documents

Recommendations

Info

exchanging pleasure over your chin-up spirit and continued excellent health.” Mr. Clemow’s letter continues: “The circumspect Century trembled, I’m almost certain, down to the frayed magnifying glass which hangs from the telephone book. There must be black sheep in even the most august, woolly flock.” Roosevelt delighted at the report. In the most controversial legislation of his presidency, FDR proposed that when a federal judge, including those on the Supreme Court, reached the age of 70 and chose not to retire, that the President could add a new Justice to the Bench. By the winter of 1935, the Supreme Court had become the last hope of those who were committed to blocking the New Deal. FDR’s concept of the constitutional powers of the President and the Congress to cope with the Great Depression was much closer to Theodore Roosevelt’s but very different from that of FDR’s Republican predecessors who had appointed the dominant majority of the Supreme Court. The anti-New Deal forces literally started thousands of legal actions to stop the fulfillment of programs which the President had initiated, that Congress had legislated, and the people in landslide elections had approved. The Court invalidated the Railroad Retirement Act. It then overturned the National Recovery Act as well as the Mortgage Moratorium legislation. In 1936 it ruled the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional. Harlan Fiske Stone, appointed by Calvin Coolidge, wrote a dissent accusing his colleagues of deciding on the basis of their own economic theories rather than fair constitutional interpretation. The Court proceeded to overturn legislation designed to bring order and safety to the desperate coal mining industry; it overturned the Municipal Bankruptcy Act created to save local governments across the country in financial distress; and then it ruled unconstitutional the New York State law establishing minimum wages, outlawing child labor and regulating the hours and labor conditions affecting women. Even the opponents of the New Deal were embarrassed. FDR awaited the election returns of 1936 before acting. He was re-elected in an overwhelming landslide. The Court was about the decide the constitutionality of the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act establishing collective bargaining and protecting the right of labor to organize, and the minimum age and employment laws. It was a 8
dramatic moment in our history. Would the economic and social revolution enacted by the elected representatives of the people be defeated – not at the polls but by a Court whose majority philosophy the people had decisively repudiated? Would it now return the demand for change to the anarchy and violence of the streets? The conservative/radical justices who dominated the Court, though aged and in declining health, were determined to stay in office as long as Roosevelt was President in order to frustrate his programs. President Roosevelt took comfort in reading these words from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural: The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal… Roosevelt had enormous respect for the constitutional framework of the balance of power and for the integrity of the Supreme Court as an independent branch of our government. But he stood with Lincoln in rejecting the concept that the Constitution was a rigid, inflexible instrument that could prevent the government from responding to crises that threatened to destroy the nation. FDR presented his reorganization proposal to Congress on February 5, 1937. Within weeks, under pressure from Chief Justice Hughes, another Centurion, the Court reversed its course, upholding the Wagner Act and the Social Security legislation and even the State Minimum Wage laws it had ruled unconstitutional just months before. Most of the reorganization proposals were adopted by the Congress including the provision that obliges federal judges, other than those on the Supreme Court, to take senior status at the age of 70 so that the President can appoint new justices to the bench on which they serve. Wendell Willkie, elected to the Century on December 5, 1936, having been nominated by John W. Davis, wrote: “Mr. Roosevelt has won. The Court is now his… Mr. Roosevelt has accomplished exactly what he would have accomplished if Congress had approved his proposal…” 9
Page 1 and 2: Franklin Delano Roosevelt A Man of
Page 3 and 4: Derek Bok, later became President o
Page 5 and 6: ought the delegates to their feet -
Page 7: were served in September. When we c
Page 11 and 12: probably the most useful work that
Page 13 and 14: the nation. On March 28, 1941, less

Franklin Delano Roosevelt A Man of the Century

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?