Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Ulster (Faculty of Arts - American Studies), course: America in the Depression 1929 - 1941, language: English, abstract: Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to change the composition of the American Supreme Court can be seen from different perspectives. Some historians depict the Supreme Court debacle as the beginning of the end of the New Deal, whereas "in later years, Roosevelt [himself], asserted that the court-packing fiasco was one in which he lost the battle but won the war [...]" (Coker, p. 114). In this essay, I will describe the situation which led to his proposal of reorganization, his further proceedings and the reactions to them. I will also analyze the results and the effects which it had on the New Deal during his continuing presidency.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Ulster (Faculty of Arts - American Studies), course: America in the Depression 1929 - 1941, language: English, abstract: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to change the composition of the American Supreme Court can be seen from different perspectives. Some historians depict the Supreme Court debacle as the beginning of the end of the New Deal, whereas “in later years, Roosevelt [himself], asserted that the court-packing fiasco was one in which he lost the battle but won the war [...]” (Coker, p. 114). In this essay, I will describe the situation which led to his proposal of reorganization, his further proceedings and the reactions to them. I will also analyze the results and the effects which it had on the New Deal during his continuing presidency.

"A stunning work of history."—Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of No Ordinary Time and Team of Rivals Beginning in 1935, the Supreme Court's conservative majority left much of FDR's agenda in ruins. The pillars of the New Deal fell in short succession. It was not just the New Deal but democracy itself that stood on trial. In February 1937, Roosevelt struck back with an audacious plan to expand the Court to fifteen justices—and to "pack" the new seats with liberals who shared his belief in a "living" Constitution.

Rule of law and constitutionalist ideals are understood by many, if not most, as necessary to create a just political order. Defying the traditional division between normative and positive theoretical approaches, this book explores how political reality on the one hand, and constitutional ideals on the other, mutually inform and influence each other. Seventeen chapters from leading international scholars cover a diverse range of topics and case studies to test the hypothesis that the best normative theories, including those regarding the role of constitutions, constitutionalism and the rule of law, conceive of the ideal and the real as mutually regulating.

An in-depth analysis of the workings and legacy of the Supreme Court led by Charles Evans Hughes. Charles Evans Hughes, a man who, it was said, "looks like God and talks like God," became chief justice in 1930, a year when more than 1,000 banks closed their doors. Today the Hughes Court is often remembered as a conservative bulwark against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. But that view, according to author Michael Parrish, is not accurate. In an era when Nazi Germany passed the Nuremberg Laws and extinguished freedom in much of Western Europe, the Hughes Court put the stamp of constitutional approval on New Deal entitlements, required state and local governments to bring their laws into conformity with the federal Bill of Rights, and took the first steps toward developing a more uniform code of criminal justice.

This important book is a detailed reinterpretation of one of the most explosive events in modern American politics - Franklin Roosevelt's controversial attempt in 1937 to "pack" the Supreme Court by adding justices who supported his New Deal policies. McKenna traces in unprecedented detail theorigins of FDR's plan, its secret history, and the President's final failure. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources McKenna provides the definitive account of a turning point in American political and legal history.