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The Role of Religion in the Defeat of the 1937 Court-Packing Plan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

William G. Ross
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Extract

Religious issues and clergy played a prominent and now largely forgotten role in the defeat of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's controversial 1937 proposal to add six Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although many prominent Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish clergy and lay persons shared Roosevelt's frustration with the Court's obstruction of legislation to ameliorate the ravages of the Great Depression and reform the nation's economic system, many of the New Deal's most ardent supporters feared that Roosevelt's plan threatened religious liberty by making the Court vulnerable to political pressure. Opposition to Court-packing among clerics and lay persons, who warned that it could subject religious minorities to majoritarian tyranny, may have contributed heavily to the plan's defeat. The prevalence of these fears that diminution of judicial independence would threaten religious freedom helps to demonstrate that the Supreme Court already was widely regarded as an important guardian of personal liberty on the eve of the Court's transition from its long-time role as a defender of property rights to its modern role as a protector of personal rights.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , 2008 , pp. 629 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2008

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197. Ltr. from Thomas F. Konop to Robert M. LaFollette (Mar. 5, 1937) (on file in LaFollette Family Papers, id. at Box 365.

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199. U.S. v. Carolene Prod., 304 U.S. 144, 152-153, n. 4 (1938).

200. Id.

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