Court Packing Plan Essay

On February 5, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced a plan to expand the Supreme Court. The Judicial Reorganization Bill, also dubbed the “court-packing plan,” aimed to create a majority on the high court that would presumably be more favorable to the New Deal programs that the administration was attempting to institute. The acts and programs that President Roosevelt presented during his first administration ran into great hostility from the Supreme Court, which overturned several New Deal programs in the first few years. With important pieces of legislation dealing with social security and other public welfare programs still on the agenda, President Roosevelt and his advisors looked for a way to shift the balance of power within

the Supreme Court. Among the bill’s provisions was a proposal to add one Supreme Court justice for every member older than 70 and half years, with a cap of six additional justices. While the Constitution is silent as to the number of justices who should be on the Supreme Court, historically, the size had ranged from six to ten. President Roosevelt wanted a Constitutional revolution, and he soon took the airwaves to try to garner national support for the piece of legislation that would do just that.
On March 9, 1937, President Roosevelt used one of his fireside chats to present to the American people his plan to change the composition of the Court. During his radio address, Roosevelt attempted to garner support for his plan by highlighting the line that was being drawn between the policies advocated by his administration and the staunch refusal of certain justices to allow for those programs to proceed. He explained that his plan was meant to ensure that the court would have new blood and have people who would see the modern circumstances of American life. President Roosevelt went on to accuse the court of having overstepped its bounds and switched from exercising proper judicial review to becoming a “third house of Congress”. The President furthered his message by denying that the justices were compelled to overturn his legislation by noting that some of the justices had dissented.
Near the end of his address, President Roosevelt assured the people that his plan was not an attack on the court. It instead, was an attempt to restore the court to its “rightful” and “historic” place in the country’s system of Constitutional government and to have it resume its task of making the Constitution a “system of living law.”
While Roosevelt may have expected resounding support for his plan after his radio message, the bill was received negatively by the American people and members of congress. Members from both parties had reservations and were soon discussing how to thwart the President’s plan. While individuals may have had a multitude of concerns, Roosevelt’s plan was an attack on the principle of separation of powers and the very foundation of the Constitution. Never had any president attempted to do what President Roosevelt tried to accomplish through the Court Packing plan and his radio address on March 7th.
By proposing to expand the court to as many 15 justices, Roosevelt could have wielded influence over the Court’s jurisprudence for years to come.

While his motivations for doing so had the general welfare of the nation in mind, Roosevelt could have risked turning the judiciary into another political branch. If the Court Packing plan had succeeded the Constitutional Revolution that took place during this time would have taken a whole other meaning. Although Roosevelt still received a victory as the Supreme Court eventually began supporting pieces of New Deal legislation, the defeat of the plan still served as a victory for the independence of the federal judiciary and the principle of separation of

powers.
Seventy years later, the United States is once again witnessing a president’s attempt to circumvent the other branches of government to fulfill his plans. In a move that is reminiscent to Roosevelt’s fireside addresses, Trump has often taken to his social media account to criticize the other branches of government and specifically, the federal judiciary. He sees these other branches of government as obstacles to the implementation of his questionable “Make America Great Again” agenda. Nowhere was this clearer than when he launched a twitter war against federal judges who had struck down his Muslim Ban Executive Order. In a barrage of tweets Trump called a judge a “so called judge,” told his followers to blame the judge if something bad happened, and implied that the Ninth Circuit was biased and political.
It is difficult to compare what Trump had done to what President Roosevelt was hoping to accomplish with his Court Packing plan.

Trump has not yet called for a radical piece of legislation that would change the composition of the court to the degree of the Court Packing plan. Moreover, President Roosevelt’s purpose behind the court packing plan was to nominate more judges that would in theory be more open to the administration’s New Deal programs. While some of these programs were poorly conceived and did have some constitutional deficiencies, many well written acts were still struck down because the conservative bloc of the Court refused to move past its arcane beliefs surrounding the Freedom of Contract. This was a completely different set of circumstances from those that Trump experienced when he chose to berate the judges for striking down the ban. However, there are some striking similarities between president Roosevelt’s statements during his fireside chat and Trump’s

tweets.
The language that most sticks out from both men is their belief that the courts had become too politicized. President Roosevelt accused the Supreme Court of becoming a “third house of Congress,” and Trump implied that the federal 9th circuit had made its decision on the Muslim Ban based on political beliefs. Both men wanted the federal courts to pass laws that they felt needed to be passed for their agendas to move forward. When they failed to do so both President Roosevelt and Trump resorted to attacks on the judiciary. To some degree, both men believed that they were president so everyone, including the federal courts, should be doing what they say and passing legislation that they wanted passed.
The statements made by Roosevelt and Trump were attacks on strongly held Constitutional principles such as the separation of powers and on the very foundation of the Constitution itself. If both President Roosevelt and Trump had their way, they would have personally begun a Constitutional Revolution that would have allowed for the execution of their agendas. Fortunately, the American people have recognized the importance of principles such as the separation of powers and have stopped this sort of revolution from taking place.