Evening star., 1937-02-14
ROOSEVELT'S AIM HELD
SUBSERVIENCE OF COURT
Tribunals Unfavorable Rulings ON New
Deal Laws Stir Steady Hostility
i'm President.
BY MARK SULLIVAN.

"OR understanding President
l. Roosevelt's attempted action
about the Supreme Court, clar-
L ity can be achieved by brief
recital Of what led up to it, recital
which necessarily must be much con-
densed.
When the New Dealers came into
power with the Inauguration Of Mr..
Roosevelt, on March 4, 1888, they took
it for granted the Supreme Court
would not stand in their way. Whether
the New Deal was consistent with the
Constitution; whether the New Deal
and, on the other hand, the Constitu-
ton and the courts were mutually ex-
elusive; whether the two could exist
side by side-all that the New Dealers
regarded as immaterial. They took
1t for granted that the Supreme Court
would accommodate itself.
Mr.. Roosevelt, indeed, seemed to
hold that even under normal condi-
tions the Supreme Court deferred to
the President and to whatever party
was in power. In one of his campaign
speeches, at Baltimore, October 25,
1882, he had said: THE Republican
party was in complete control of all
branches Of the Government, the leg
islative, with the Senate and Congress,
and the executive department-and
I may add for full measure to make
it complete, the United States Supreme
Court, as we'll"
II Mr.. Roosevelt thought that even
in normal times the Supreme Court
takes guidance from the President and
party in power, much more did he
think the court must defer under the
circumstances in which he found him.
self after he himself became Presi-
dent. He was endowed with extraor-
dinary power and prestige; the coun-
try was in panic, the President had a
franchise from Congress (and from
much Of the public) to take whatever
steps he deemed wise. That the court
might stand in the way never occurred
to the New Dealers. So far as minor
New Dealers gave thought to such a
possibility at all, their attitude toward
the court was one of you GOTTA" one
which said in effect you better-or
else"
Not in Spirit Of Threat
This attitude was not in the spirit
Of a threat, but rather in the spirit of
calmly pointing out an inevitable con-
pathetic to the New Deal, friendly
biographer of Mr.. Roosevelt, wrote in
1888: When Chief Justice Hughes
administered the oath to Mr.. Roose-
velt during the banking panic, the dis
tinguished members of the Supreme
Court had reasonable grounds for
wondering whether they would ever
get another pay check. The con-
tinued existence of the Supreme Court,
like the continued existence of the
rest of the political system, depends
very largely on whether or not the
revolutionary process now under way
can be guided and kept more or less
orderly the least that the Amer
ican experiment has right to expect
of the courts is Interpretation and
correlation by men whose broad social
philosophy is the same as the philoS-
ophy behind the experiment"
While the New Dealers had conf
dence that the Supreme Court must
bow to the New Deal, they relied also
upon the possibility of death of some
of the elderly, conservative justices
In this reliance they followed policy
of delay, Of preventing New Deal cases
coming before the courts. They
stalled" This strategy" wrote one
of the New Dealers in 1888, in the
book called THE New Dealers,
"also would allow the grim reaper
to do his stuff on some Of the
conservative dodos on the bench
(That early New Deal policy of prac-
ticing delay in the courts makes ironic
MIR. Roosevelt's present complaint
about slowness Of the courts)
"The court" said Justice William
C. Coleman Of the Federal District
Court of Baltimore, in May, 1884
sis certainly not impressed with
the attitude of the Government .
It would seem to the court that the
Government and its representatives
would welcome some opportunity to
have their authority tested under this
IN. r. A. act. The Government au-
thorities will not get from the court
any encouragement in the sort Of tao