“The history of the Supreme Court during the New Deal is not a simple tale of the unmediated interplay of judicial purposes, external political events, and case outcomes.” (41) In Rethinking the New Deal Court author Barry Cushman challenges the reasoning of the Supreme Court’s infamous ‘switch in time that saved the nine’. The conventional belief states in the spring of 1937 the Supreme Court abruptly abandoned it’s judicial precedents on commerce and due process in an attempt to salvage their political positions in the face of President Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme. For many years this theory has been taught as the main reason behind the Supreme Court’s adherent reversal. However, Cushman retracts from this belief. Rather than accepting the court-packing scheme at face value, he focuses upon the interdoctrinal connections of the commerce and due process clauses. In doing so, Cushman concludes that “their formation, development, and disintegration” is essential to understanding the Supreme Court’s decision in 1937. (3) In a sense, Cushman argues these events did not occur in a single decision in 1937, but were actually part of an evolving jurisprudence that took form as early as 1934 in Nebbia v. New York.
“The story of the 1930s is in part the story of how this integrated body of jurisprudence disintegrated when the court…abandoned a doctrinal formulation that had become a central nexus of such integration.” (5) As explained by Cushman, this integrated body of jurisprudence, commonly called laissez-faire constitutionalism, had been interwoven into America’s society since the Civil War. With ideology based upon liberal economics, laissez-faire constitutionalists wished to restrain organized labor and governmental...
... middle of paper ...
...use extended into regulation of local business. (207)
In closing, Cushman provides a very enriching study of the New Deal Court. In doing so, Cushman references a variety of important materials; including, the justices' own writings, government reports, and congressional hearings. With nearly a third of the book dedicated to references and endnotes, it is easy to see how much time and effort Cushman put into his work. The gradual evolution of public and private realms under law, changes to commerce and due process, and the leadership of various Assistant Justices and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes will grant the reader with a better understanding of the important time of constitutional revolution in America.
Works Cited
Barry Cushman. Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Hall, Kermit L, eds. The Oxford guide to United States Supreme Court decisions New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
In America’s time there have been many great men who have spent their lives creating this great country. Men such as George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson fit these roles. They are deemed America’s “founding fathers” and laid the support for the most powerful country in history. However, one more man deserves his name to be etched into this list. His name was John Marshall, who decided case after case during his role as Chief Justice that has left an everlasting mark on today’s judiciary, and even society itself. Through Cases such as Marbury v. Madison (1803) and McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) he established the Judicial Branch as an independent power. One case in particular, named Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), displayed his intuitive ability to maintain a balance of power, suppress rising sectionalism, and unite the states under the Federal Government.
From 1992 to 2005, the Supreme Court’s decisions mostly mirrored public opinion. After Rehnquist’s passing in 2005, the Supreme Court has swung more in the direction of the conservative party than in pervious years. The conservative agenda is becoming more prominent than it was under Rehnquist and before O’Connor retired. Besides swing the court to the consertive side, Rehnquist’s passing also ended the longest running group of Justices to serve together. They had...
Beard, Charles Austin. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2014
During and after the turmoil of the American Revolution, the people of America, both the rich and the poor, the powerful and the meek, strove to create a new system of government that would guide them during their unsure beginning. This first structure was called the Articles of Confederation, but it was ineffective, restricted, and weak. It was decided to create a new structure to guide the country. However, before a new constitution could be agreed upon, many aspects of life in America would have to be considered. The foremost apprehensions many Americans had concerning this new federal system included fear of the government limiting or endangering their inalienable rights, concern that the government’s power would be unbalanced, both within
Zywicki, T. (1997). Beyond the Shell and Husk of History: The History of the Seventeenth Amendment and Its Implications for Current reform Proposals. Cleveland State Law Review, 45, 197. Retrieved October 3, 2013, from http://mason.gmu.edu/~tzywick2/Cleveland%20State%20Senators.pdf
Richard Kinderdall, The New Deal as Watershed: The Recent Literature, The Journal of American History, Vol 54, No.4 March 1968 p.845
...the Supreme Court, during the time in and around the Great Depression, valued the commerce clause and the police power above the contract clause. The aforementioned cases clearly show this bias of siding with the government using these provisions. Could the President’s threat of a “Court-Packing Plan” have forced the Supreme Court to act in this way? It is theoretically possible, but public out lash at Roosevelt’s plan nearly ensured that such a plan would not have come to fruition, and if that is the case, the justices had nothing to fear and no reason to give in to his wishes.
Judicial Tyranny: The New Kings of America? Is a conglomeration of articles and short essays that attempts to expose the federal court’s relatively recent intrusion into our way of life by way of immoral legislative influence; made possible by presidents, congressmen, and apathetic voters who have relinquished their consent without contest. The author, Mark I. Sutherland and his associates believe that the Constitution’s system of checks and balances between the three branches of government has been usurped by an overreaching, immoral federal court system. The book explores how Judges have been influencing and shaping social and political policy for years by legislating from the judicial bench. In short, Americans have exchanged the rule of law for the rule by the judges. However, it does a poor job in addressing other major issues concerning the federal court system as a whole.
The life of every American citizen, whether they realize it or not, is influenced by one entity--the United States Supreme Court. This part of government ensures that the freedoms of the American people are protected by checking the laws that are passed by Congress and the actions taken by the President. While the judicial branch may have developed later than its counterparts, many of the powers the Supreme Court exercises required years of deliberation to perfect. In the early years of the Supreme Court, one man’s judgement influenced the powers of the court systems for years to come. John Marshall was the chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, and as the only lasting Federalist influence in a newly Democratic-Republican government, he and his fellow justices sought to perpetuate their Federalist principles in the United States’ court system. In one of the most memorable court cases of all time--the case of Marbury v. Madison-- Marshall established the idea of judicial review and strengthened the power of the judicial branch in the government. Abiding by his Federalist ideals, Marshall decided cases that would explicitly limit the power of the state government and broaden the strengths of the national government. Lastly, the Marshall Court was infamous for determining the results of cases that dealt with the interpretation of the Constitution and the importance of contracts in American society. The Marshall Court, over the span of a mere three decades, managed to influence the life of every American citizen even to this day by impacting the development of the judicial branch, establishing a boundary between the state and national government, and making declarations on the sanctity of contracts ("The Marshall Court"...
The Warren Court represents the years from 1953 to 1969 when Earl Warren was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Urofsky, 2001). During the sixteen years of the Warren Court seventeen different men served under the leadership of Chief Justice Warren (Urofsky, 2001). These associate judges, and the order in which they took office, played a large part in the decisions that were passed because they affected the shift from a more conservative court in the first half of the Warren Court to a more liberal perspective that was prevalent in the second half of the Warren Court (cite?). It is the later, more liberal era of the Warren Court that is remembered for many of its landmark cases. Of the seventeen justices of the Warren Court there were a few that were consistently influential in decisions and well-known for their opinions. The four most influential and well-known justices other than Chief Justice Warren were Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Joseph Brennan, and Thurgood Marshal...
The court case of Marbury v. Madison (1803) is credited and widely believed to be the creator of the “unprecedented” concept of Judicial Review. John Marshall, the Supreme Court Justice at the time, is lionized as a pioneer of Constitutional justice, but, in the past, was never really recognized as so. What needs to be clarified is that nothing in history is truly unprecedented, and Marbury v. Madison’s modern glorification is merely a product of years of disagreements on the validity of judicial review, fueled by court cases like Eakin v. Raub; John Marshall was also never really recognized in the past as the creator of judicial review, as shown in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford.
Franklin Roosevelt’s “optimism and activism that helped restore the badly shaken confidence of the nation” (pg. 467 Out of Many), was addressed in the New Deal, developed to bring about reform to the American standard of living and its low economy. It did not only make an impact during the Great Depression. Although, many of the problems addressed in the New Deal might have been solved, those with the long lasting effect provide enough evidence to illustrate how great a success the role of the New Deal played out in America’s history to make it what it is today.
The significant impact Robert Dahl’s article, “Decision-Making in a Democracy: the Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker” created for our thought on the Supreme Court it that it thoroughly paved the way towards exemplifying the relationship between public opinion and the United States Supreme Court. Dahl significantly was able to provide linkages between the Supreme Court and the environment that surrounds it in order for others to better understand the fundamental aspects that link the two together and explore possible reasoning and potential outcomes of the Court.
Robert N. Clinton, ‘Judges Must Make Law: A Realistic Appraisal of the Judicial Function in a Democratic Society’ [1981-1982] 67 Iowa L. Rev. 711 http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/ilr67&div=38&g_sent=1&collection=journals accessed 12 February 2012