| NDN | Photo Gallery | Documents | Classroom | Search |
FDR and the Supreme Court
Honorable Franklin D. Roosevelt
I want to register my protest against your doing any meddling with the United States Supreme Court. If you will allow me to use your own simile, I will say that as head of the Administrative Branch only of our Government, you exceed your prerogative whenever you attempt to drive two other horses. To change the figure of speech, if "one of these horses is bucking or trying to lie down in the traces," it is the Executive and not the Judicial; it is you, Mr. President, who is preventing the plowing from being done.
I am persuaded that we can safely trust the future of our Country to the "nine old men" who have never "assumed the power to veto" but have merely discharged their constitutional responsibilities. They have no political axes to grind and should have no pressure put upon them but that of their oaths of office and their vast experience. I consider that our country would be exposed to a very grave source of danger should any President, regardless of his party affiliation appoint six men to the Supreme Bench.
May I venture to say also that with the experience you would gain by the time you reach seventy, you would be far more valuable to the country than you are at present.
Since you launched your proposal to change the Supreme Court, there has been a great deal said about your having received a mandate from the people. If this proposition had been made a campaign issue, then, and only then could you rightly claim such a mandate, but when it was carefully kept in seclusion until after November 3, 1936, it looks very much to the common uninitiated man of the street as if you were afraid of defeat at the poles (sic) should the people know of you plan. Certainly they can give no mandate to a plan of which you have never breathed to them a single word. It is said that you were given more votes in your last election than any President ever received. It must also be remembered that there were also cast against you more votes than any President ever had. A minority of some 19,000,000 is no mean number. A President of a Democracy should represent the whole personnel of his country and not just the majority.
I feel that any President has plenty to do when he properly administers his own branch of the government. When he tries thru the removal of patronage or any other means of brow-beating, to whip recalcitrant Senators into line, or to have his own way by forcing on the public laws which are declared unconstitutional by a nine to nothing vote of the Supreme court, he is an embryonic dictator in fact if not in name.
I have felt in the past that you had the interest of the common people at heart but what will happen when you are given all the power you ask? Can it be possible for just one man to be able to know what is the best thing to do in EVERY Branch of this complex Government? I should like to see you go down in history as our greatest President and not our first Dictator.
If I did not feel that I too am a liberal I would not have the temerity to write you thus. Only great men can retract when they are convinced they have made a mistake.
Please believe me to be,
H-- B-- D--, M.D.
Documents > Proposal | Cases | Speeches | Articles | Letters | Cartoons |