![]() Those who have intimated that the president of the United States is trying to drive that team overlook the simple fact that the president, as chief executive, is himself one of the three horses. Two of the horses are pulling in unison today the third is not. The three horses are, of course, the three branches of government-the Congress, the Executive, and the courts. Last Thursday I described the American form of government as a three-horse team provided by the Constitution to the American people so that their field might be plowed. I want to talk with you very simply about the need for present action in this crisis-the need to meet the unanswered challenge of one-third of a nation ill-nourished, ill-clad, ill-housed. But to the far-sighted it is far-reaching in its possibilities of injury to America. There are no lines of depositors outside closed banks. We are at a crisis in our ability to proceed with that protection. The courts, however, have cast doubts on the ability of the elected Congress to protect us against catastrophe by meeting squarely our modern social and economic conditions. For in the last three national elections an overwhelming majority of them voted a mandate that the Congress and the president begin the task of providing that protection 1-not after long years of debate, but now. The American people have learned from the depression. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, The American Presidency Project, Gerhard Peters and John T. The Court eventually did accept Roosevelt’s more expansive view of government power, but that was driven by appointments he made after the court-packing plan’s political defeat. Instead, the Court was delayed in announcing its decision in Parrish, leading to the inaccurate perception that the justices had retreated. The Court had already voted on Parrish prior to Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat, and there is no evidence that Roberts or any other justice changed his vote afterward. ![]() 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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