FDR's bold plan to circumvent Republican obstructionism -- from NPR's Fresh Air

[grasswire]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789097

Even before Roosevelt took office in 1933, he knew that a conflict with the high court was inevitable. The court had been a powerfully conservative force in American life since the early 1880s, and at the time it included members such as Justice Pierce Butler, who opposed the federal regulation of Wall Street, and Justice George Sutherland, who frequently battled progressive legistion.

.......
"Some suggested that Congress ought to be able to overrule the Supreme Court," he explains. "By a two-thirds vote, Congress should be able to overturn any ruling of the Supreme Court, essentially making Congress the last word on the Constitution and not the Supreme Court."

FDR Saw Court, Not Constitution, As The Problem

Roosevelt, however, didn't endorse the ideas that Congress or the American public should be able to override the Supreme Court.

"He didn't think it was practical," says Shesol. "It takes a very long time, usually, to amend the Constitution ... enough to change the reality in the country. But secondly, and this is really important in understanding why Roosevelt packed the court, [is that] he didn't see any kind of contradiction between the Constitution and the New Deal. He didn't think there was anything in the Constitution that prevented him from doing what he needed to do. The problem as he saw it was not the Constitution; it was the conservatives on that particular Supreme Court. So what could you possibly do about them? So that's how he came to the idea of packing it."

Roosevelt's idea was that for any justice over the age of 70 who refused to retire, the president could appoint a new justice to sit beside the current justice and do his work.

"If the plan passed and no one [on the current court] retired, Roosevelt would instantly get to appoint six new liberal justices to the Supreme Court," explains Shesol. "Because he couldn't push the conservatives off the court, he thought, 'Well, at least I can outnumber them.' And what most people didn't realize then or today is that this is entirely constitutional. There's nothing in the Constitution that sets the number of justices at nine. The Constitution says nothing about how many justices there are."

[Doctor_J]

1. What, no chess?

That's what a real leader acts like. The situation he inherited was worse than Obama's. He decided to actually do everything in his power to fix it, instead of making deals with the ones who had driven us into the depression. What a concept.

[grasswire]

2. yes, principle before politics

Amazing.

[RainDog]

3. k&r n/t