| Date | Author and Title | Quote |
| May 31, 1935 | Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR Press Conference | "We are the only Nation in the world that has not solved that problem. We thought we were solving it, and now it has been thrown right straight in our faces. We have been relegated to the horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce." [source] |
| January 15, 1936 | The Nation, Editorial
The Supreme Court Swings the Ax | "Even while he was delivering his message to Congress, Mr. Roosevelt was speaking in the shadow of the court's power. Now the court proves definitely that it is the last bulwark of the vested interests. They have been displaced from the Legislative and have been outwitted by the Executive; they find their last refuge in the Judiciary." [source] |
| June 2, 1936 | Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR Press Conference (Excerpt) | "It seems to be fairly clear, as a result of this decision and former decisions, using this question of minimum wage as an example, that the "no-man's-land" where no Government—State or Federal—can function is being more clearly defined." [source] |
| 1936 | Robert E. Cushman
The Supreme Court and the Constitution | "If we feel that the constitutional wreckage left by the New Deal decisions is due to the abuse of judicial power rather than to the inadequacy of the Constitution to modern needs, then we may logically demand some limitation on the power of the Supreme Court." [source] |
| October 30, 1936 | Herbert Hoover
This Challenge to Liberty | "Has he abandoned his implied determination to change the Constitution? Why not tell the American people before election what change he proposes? Does he intend to stuff the Court itself? Why does the New Deal not really lay its cards on the table?" [source] |
| January 6, 1937 | Roosevelt, Franklin D.
The Annual Message to the Congress, 1937 | "...it is not to be assumed that there will be prolonged failure to bring legislative and judicial action into closer harmony. Means must be found to adapt our legal forms and our judicial interpretation to the actual present national needs of the largest progressive democracy in the modern world." [source] |
| February 1, 1937 | William E. Borah, U.S. Senator, Idaho
Our Supreme Judicial Tribunal: Proposed Changes and the People | "I make this comment, however, that it is a demonstrable truth, supported by a wealth of facts, that the Supreme Court, in instances too numerous to be recorded tonight, has thrown the shield of the Constitution about the rights of the citizen when all other appeals for relief have failed him." [source] |
| February 5, 1937 | Franklin D. Roosevelt
Judicial Branch Reorganization Plan | "We therefore, earnestly recommend that the necessity of an increase in the number of judges be supplied by legislation providing for the appointment of additional Judges in all federal courts, without exception, where there are incumbent judges of retirement age who do not choose to retire or to resign." [source] |
| February 5, 1937 | Homer S. Cummings, Attorney-General of the United States
Draft of the Proposed Law | "When any judge... has heretofore or hereafter attained the age of 70 years... the President for each such judge... shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint one additional judge to the court to which the former is commissioned." [source] |
| February 5, 1937 | Homer S. Cummings, Attorney-General of the United States
Attorney General's Letter | "Delay in the administration of justice is the outstanding defect of our Federal judicial system. It has been a cause of concern to practically every one of my predecessors in office." [source] |
| February 7, 1937 | Felix Frankfurter
Frankfurter Letter to Roosevelt | "You 'shocked' me no less by the dramatic, untarnished secrecy with which you kept your scheme until you took the whole nation into your confidence. Dramatically and artistically you did "shock" me." [source] |
| February 8, 1937 | The New York Herald-Tribune
Editorial | "It was a French King, Louis XIV, who said, "L'etat, c'est moi"—"I am the State." The paper shell of American constitutionalism would continue if President Roosevelt secured the passage of the law he now demands. But it would be only a shell." [source] |
| February 9, 1937 | Franklin D. Roosevelt
Roosevelt Letter to Frankfurter | "The return of prosperity, at this moment, may blunt our senses but under it all I am very certain that the maintenance of constitutional government in this Nation still depends on action—" [source] |
| February 13, 1937 | Robert M. La Follette, U.S. Senator, Wisconsin
Backing the President's Court Proposal | "There is a lot of talk of the President "packing" the Court. Let's not be misled by a red herring. The Court has been "packed" for years—"packed" in the interests of Economic Royalists, "packed" for the benefit of the Liberty Leaguers, "packed" in the cause of Reaction and Laissez-faire." [source] |
| February 13, 1937 | The Nation
Purging the Supreme Court | "...it is the task of progressives to support the measure—with an open-eyed awareness of its shortcomings. It will clear the blockage of New Deal legislation—at least for the immediate future. Meanwhile it will have delivered a blow to the sanctity of the Supreme Court from which the court will never wholly recover." [source] |
| February 14, 1937 | Homer S. Cummings, Attorney-General of the United States
Reasons for President's Plan and the Remedy | "...the Constitution is not a dam erected to check the flow of the life of our people. It is a channel through which that life flows, directing, guiding, facilitating it, but at no point endeavoring to stop it." [source] |
| February 15, 1937 | Stuart Chase
Stuart Chase's Letter to the New York Times
Chase's letter, which was not published, served as the model for Roosevelt's speech of March 4th. | "And here are all these farmers and workers. Now. Here are women laboring 48 hours a week in New Bedford mills for $5. Now. Here is the Dust Bowl beginning to blow again. Now." [source] |
| February 18, 1937 | Felix Frankfurter
Frankfurter Letter to Roosevelt
With Frankfurter's "notes dealing with what is the heart of the difficulty about the Supreme Court." | "And so, the aim is not to impair the authority of the Constitution or the independence of the Court, but to protect the Constitution which, as John Marshall told us, was 'intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.'" [source] |
| February 20, 1937 | Herbert Hoover
This is No Lawyer's Dispute over Legalisms | "It is the people's rights that are endangered. Once political power makes use of the court, its strength and its moral prestige are irretrievably weakened, When those are weakened, the very safeguards from coercion are in decay." [source] |
| February 22, 1937 | William Draper Lewis, Director, American Law Institute
Controversial and Non-Controversial Aspects of the Court Proposal | "As to those of you who are in favor of the general lines of the New Deal there should be no doubt. You should support the President's suggested legislation. There is no valid excuse for your not doing so." [source] |
| February 26, 1937 | Robert J. Bulkley, U. S. Senator, Ohio
Precedents for the Court Plan | "When the Supreme Court exercises the right to nullify an Act of Congress because of the preconception of its members on questions of public policy, then indeed has our form of government been changed.... Chief Justice Hughes has said: 'We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the Judges say it is.' " [source] |
| March 1, 1937 | George R. Farnum, Former Assistant Attorney General
Storm Over the Supreme Court | "If the President succeeds in imposing his will on Congress, it may mark the beginning of the end of American democracy—at least as we have grown up to know it. Immediately it will create a Court that will incarnate the philosophy and spirit of the New Deal..." [source] |
| March 4, 1937 | Arthur Lamneck, Congressman, Ohio
A Representative Democratic View of the Court Issue | "In a world given over to one-man governments, the President has stood out as the defender of democracy.... Can this be the same man who, controlling the legislative branch of the government, now seeks to gain control of the judiciary? Do we want a one-man government; no matter how benevolent?" [source] |
| March 4, 1937 | Franklin D. Roosevelt
Now! | "If three well-matched horses are put to the task of plowing up a field where the going is heavy, and the team of three pull as one, the field will be plowed. If one horse lies down in the traces or plunges off in another direction, the field will not be plowed." [source] |
| March 6, 1937 | Raymond Moley, Editor, News-Week
The President's Court Proposal | "...it seems to me that the charge of defeatism, hysteria, reaction and cowardice comes with poor grace from those who were afraid to submit a constitutional amendment to the people two years ago and who did not take the public into their confidence in the year 1936—the one year when the people were permitted a voice in government." [source] |
| March 8, 1937 | James Truslow Adams, Historian
What the Supreme Court Does for Us | "...if the Constitution is to be changed by packing the Court, then that same method might some day be used to alter those parts which guarantee us our religious and other liberties as well as those relating to commerce and other matters." [source] |
| March 9, 1937 | Franklin D. Roosevelt
On the Reorganization of the Judiciary(Fireside Chat) | "But if by that phrase the charge is made that I... will appoint Justices who will act as Justices and not as legislators—if the appointment of such Justices can be called "packing the Courts," then I say that I and with me the vast majority of the American people favor doing just that thing—now." [source] |
| March 10, 1937 | James M. Landis, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission
The Power the Court Has Appropriated | "The President suggests the way to do otherwise. His proposal recognizes that the issue is not one of the Constitution, but an issue of men whose interpretations of that document makes it a straitjacket upon our national life." [source] |
| March 10, 1937 | Burton K. Wheeler, U.S. Senator, Montana
First Member of the Senate to Back the President in '32— | "The point of disagreement in this controversy isn't between those who want social and economic reform and those who do not want it. It is on the method of getting reform and whether that reform will be sham or of a real and permanent character." [source] |
| March 17,1937 | The New Republic
The President Faces the Court | "It is now clear, in our opinion, that neither the President nor anyone else has any marked enthusiasm for the device now under consideration. But no one has any enthusiasm, either, for the situation into which the conservative majority of the Court has brought us by a series of political decisions, politically inspired." [source] |
| March 22, 1937 | John H. Clarke, Former Associate Justice, U. S. Supreme Court
The Naked Question of the Constitutionality of the Court Proposal | "...in eighty years of our history, the number of judges of the Supreme Court was first determined by act of Congress, twice the number has been reduced and five times it has been increased, always by act of Congress and never before has the power of Congress under the Constitution to thus legislate been questioned..." [source] |
| March 22, 1937 | Charles E. Hughes, Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
Chief Justice Hughes' Letter to Senator Wheeler | "The Supreme Court is fully abreast of its work. When we rose on March 15 (for the present recess) we had heard argument in cases in which certiorari had been granted only four weeks before, Feb. 1." [source] |
| March 29, 1937 | Carter Glass, U. S. Senator, Virginia
The Battle is On | "This infuriated propagandist for degrading the Supreme Court practically proposes another tragic era of reconstruction for the South. Should men of his mind have part in picking the six proposed judicial sycophants, very likely they would be glad to see reversed those decisions of the court that saved the civilization of the South..." [source] |
| April 13, 1937 | Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR Press Conference | "We have been worrying about the future of the country as long as the 'No Man's Land' continued to exist. Well, in the last two days the 'No Man's Land' has been eliminated but see what we have in place of it: We are now in 'Roberts' Land.'" [source] |
| May 5, 1937 | Joseph C. O'Mahoney, U. S. Senator, Wyoming
Arbitrary Power in a Republic Does Not Lie Even in a Majority | "If the Court has erred—and I think it has—let us remedy the fault, not by applying force to the judiciary but by ourselves adhering strictly to constitutional propriety. We shall thus the more quickly get ourselves and the Court back to sound principles." [source] |
| May 18, 1937 | U.S. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary
Reorganization of the Federal Judiciary | "The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the bill (S. 1392) to reorganize the judicial branch of the Government after full consideration, having unanimously amended the measure, hereby report the bill adversely with the recommendation that it do not pass...." [source] |
| July, 1937 | U.S. Senate
Excerpts from the Senate Debate | "We heard Mr. Farley saying, 'It is in the bag.' In another place and at another time he said, 'We will let the Senate talk and then we will let the House talk. Then we will call the roll. We have the votes.'" (Wheeler) [source] |
| July 9, 1937 | Burton K. Wheeler, U.S. Senator, Montana
Appeals to the Prejudices of the People | "So, my friends, the needs of the times, I repeat, are like shifting pebbles upon the beach.... When men are appointed upon the Supreme Court Bench to interpret the Constitution to meet the needs of the times, I say that a step is being taken which is reactionary." [source] |
| July 12, 1937 | Josiah W. Bailey, U. S. Senator, North Carolina [D]
We Are Dealing With the Source of Justice | "Courts find the truth. Courts declare the law. Nobody rides in a buggy behind the court. The Courts are not hitched up. Courts heretofore have been free and independent. Here is a three-horse team with the Court all hitched up, but the Court is not pulling." [source] |
| August 20, 1937 | James A. Farley, Postmaster-General
United We Stand | "...they are driven to vague prophecies of disaster and absurd charges that the President who has kept his head through the worst industrial crisis this nation has ever known, is now capable of monumental blunders that threaten the security of our American institutions." [source] |
| August 20, 1937 | Joseph F. Guffey, U. S. Senator, Pennsylvania
Politics and Supreme Courts | "...many of [the Court's] decisions, particularly those affecting the great mass of wage-earners and farmers, were deliberately written to reflect the political and economic philosophy of those who were piling up colossal fortunes through the exploitation of the people of this nation." [source] |
| [September 17, 1937] | Felix Frankfurter
[Frankfurter's draft of FDR's Constitution Day Speech, 9/17/37 | "...a Constitution is a great instrument of government—not a conveyance, not a contract, not even a statute." [source] |
| September 17, 1937 | Franklin D. Roosevelt
Address on Constitution Day, Washington, D. C. | "The Constitution of the United States was a layman's document, not a lawyer's contract. That cannot be stressed too often." [source] |
| November 9, 1945 | Justice Owen J. Roberts
Roberts Memorandum | "Those who were in the majority in the Morehead case expressed some surprise at my vote, and I heard one of the brethren ask another, 'What is the matter with Roberts?' " [source] |
