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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Robert Schlesinger
Shortly after winning re-election by a landslide in 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt made one of U.S. history's most audacious power plays, proposing to expand the
So, a liberal president at odds with a conservative
The battle that's brewing in Washington between the executive branch and the legislative on one hand and the judiciary on the other is really unlike anything we've seen since the 1930s. You have an economic crisis. You have a progressive president with large majorities, for the time being, in both houses of
What could Obama learn from your book?
There is a tremendous risk in personalizing the conflict with the
Is there anything the justices can learn?
There's a risk for them, too, in overstepping their role: that the public does engage, that these issues aren't so complex or arcane that people aren't able to see what the court is doing. And that while there is a lot of public affection for and loyalty to the
Is there anything we as citizens and spectators can learn from the book?
These complicated questions of law and the Constitution are not arcane legal matters that are best left to judges and constitutional lawyers and professors, that these are vital matters that determine the course of our national history.
You say that the court-packing fight transformed the political landscape.
There was an increasing amount of pressure on the court to make democracy work, as FDR put it. The will of the people had been expressed in landslide elections in 1932 and 1936. Roosevelt had a clear mandate and huge majorities and felt very strongly that the country had decided what needed to be done and the court was the only thing standing in the way. And the court ultimately yielded in the middle of the court-packing fight. The court recognized what was going on in the country, and the swing justice, Owen Roberts, yielded to the will of the people. And he basically acknowledged that later in life.
How did the fight change the relationship between the court and the other branches?
What surprised you the most writing this?
The decision to pack the court, which is usually described as a rash, impulsive, vindictive act, was actually the product of very long, careful, thorough discussions that FDR had over a period of years with members of his administration, his outside advisers, law professors, and any number of people. He didn't decide to do this overnight. When you understand the atmosphere of crisis in the country, the very real threat of bloodshed in the country, and the other options that seemed to be in front of Roosevelt, then you can understand how he came to believe that packing the court was the most reasonable and moderate and wise thing that he could do. A lot of people around him thought that what he needed to do was to amend the Constitution and to take away some of the powers of the
Available at Amazon.com:
Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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Clash of the Titans: President Vs. Supreme Court | Robert Schlesinger
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