Robert M. La Follette Jr. offers his support for Roosevelt's "court-packing" proposal

On February 13, 1937, liberal Republican Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr. spoke out in support of President Franklin Roosevelt's controversial plan to neutralize Supreme Court justices that were hostile to the New Deal. Over the previous two years, the high court had struck down several key pieces of New Deal legislation on the grounds that the laws delegated an unconstitutional amount of authority to the executive branch and the federal government. Flushed with his landslide re-election in 1936, President Roosevelt issued a proposal in February 1937 to provide retirement at full pay for all members of the court over seventy. If a justice refused to retire, an ''assistant'' with full voting rights was to be appointed, thus ensuring Roosevelt a liberal majority. Most Republicans and many Democrats in Congress opposed the so-called ''court-packing'' plan. However, in April, before the bill came to vote, two justices came over to the liberal side, and by a narrow majority upheld the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act, acknowledging that the national economy had grown to such a degree that federal regulation and control was now warranted. Roosevelt's reorganization plan was thus unnecessary, and in July the Senate struck it down by a vote of seventy to twenty-two. Soon after, Roosevelt had the opportunity to nominate his first Supreme Court justice, and by 1942, all but two of the justices were his appointees.

US History | November 7, 2006

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