Two book reviews by Dave Freedman
Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court By Jeff Shesol W.W. Norton, 2010, 656 pages $18.45 hardcover, $15.37 Kindle
In Franklin Roosevelt’s first term, which began in 1933 in the depths of the Great Depression, the Supreme Court struck down a series of his New Deal programs as unconstitutional. After his landslide re-election in 1937, FDR attempted to “pack” the Court by adding six more justices, to make sure his legislative agenda would not be destroyed further. His attempt, codified in the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, was interpreted by some legal scholars as a declaration of war against the Court, whose chief justice was Charles Evans Hughes. Some call it “the Constitutional revolution of 1937.” It was a severe political miscalculation by the President.
Although the bill failed, the “revolution” nevertheless may have influenced the older members of the Court to be more lenient toward FDR’s bills over the ensuing years.
The author, Jeff Shesol, is a historian (he wrote Mutual Contempt, about the relationship President Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy) and former speechwriter for Bill Clinton.
Shesol’s book is “a fascinating reconstruction of one of the great political and legal battles of the twentieth century,” said Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (2008). It is “an easy-to-read tale that unfolds like a thrilling novel,” said Christopher Malone, political science professor at Pace University.
Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices By Noah Feldman Twelve (Hatchette Book Group), November 2010, 528 pages Hardcover $19.80
Four larger-than-life justices who served under FDR, despite their mutual animosity (or perhaps because of it), helped to steer the USA through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the civil rights movement. Feldman calls them the “founding fathers of the Constitution we have today.” Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings. Each was, in his own way, a genius. They are:
Louis Brandeis, a tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America’s leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative.
Hugo Black, a Ku Klux Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights.
William O. Douglas, a tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone before had dreamed.
Robert Jackson, a back-country lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the Nuremberg trial, the most important international tribunal ever.
Scorpion tells the story of these four great justices, their relationship with Roosevelt, and with each other. Feldman is a professor at Harvard University, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem—and What We Should Do About It.
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