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FDR and the Supreme Court
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
The night you won the Governorship of New York State, I watched and heard you cheered in an Albany street. I was amazed to then learn of your physical handicap, and could not mentally fit you in the Governor's chair. Approximately eight years after witnessing that parade in you honor, I picked up the same kind of germ that you had picked up. My case was very similar to yours, excepting that I have been graduated from my two long braces, and can now manage with two canes. Because of my five years fight against paralysis, I have, I think, almost perfectly understood your national success-determination. No able bodied being can begin to comprehend the developer of steel-like will power that our similar experience is. Naturally, I have been tremendously sympathetic to you and to most of your policies.
You are now attempting to make changes in the judiciary. I am at direct odds with you on the Court issue. I can no longer follow you, boost you, or allow my obvious handicap make followers for you.
Party lines have nothing at all to do with my stand. I would not countenance the slightest change in the present judiciary system of this country by any president at any time. You are not interested in my reasons for my stand, nor am I, in this particular matter, interested in yours for wanting to make a Court change. Your will is stronger than average, a carry-over from the infantile fight. But consider before you go further.
If you persist in your present plans, I shall pit every effort against each of your political moves, against each of your state representatives. And I know I am one of many.
Yours very sincerely,
(Signed, Edith Greene De Lucia) Documents > Proposal | Cases | Speeches | Articles | Letters | Cartoons |