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Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Wheeler and the Court Fight.
In February 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt proposed legislation that would increase the number of federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court, which had struck down many of his New Deal programs. The bill would allow the president to add judges for each incumbent who was seventy or older, which would give him up to six nominations for the Supreme Court. To the left stands Homer Cummings, Roosevelt's attorney general. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a Democrat from Montana, led the opposition, using as his weapon a letter by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (represented here by the bowling ball) that expressed opposition to Roosevelt's plan. Although Congress utterly rejected Roosevelt's "court-packing" strategy, within a year the Court began judging his legislation more favorably, and a vacancy on there allowed him to appoint a new justice.
Clifford Kennedy Berryman, 1937 |