page_title: Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937
section_title: Antecedents to reform legislation
hierarchical_section_title: Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 / Antecedents to reform legislation
caption_attribution_description: The Supreme Court's official portrait of w:James Clark McReynolds
context_page_description: The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that the Court had ruled unconstitutional. The central provision of the bill would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years and 6 months.
  In the Judiciary Act of 1869, Congress had established that the United States Supreme Court would consist of the Chief Justice and eight associate justices. During Roosevelt's first term the Supreme Court struck down several New Deal measures as being unconstitutional. Roosevelt sought to reverse this by changing the makeup of the court through the appointment of new additional justices who he hoped would rule his legislative initiatives did not exceed the constitutional authority of the government. Since the U.S. Constitution does not define the size of the Supreme Court, Roosevelt pointed out that it was within the power of the Congress to change it.
context_section_description: The coming conflict with the court was foreshadowed by a 1932 campaign statement Roosevelt made:
  After March 4, 1929, the Republican party was in complete control of all branches of the government—the legislature, with the Senate and Congress; and the executive departments; and I may add, for full measure, to make it complete, the United States Supreme Court as well.
  An April 1933 letter to the president offered the idea of packing the Court: "If the Supreme Court's membership could be increased to twelve, without too much trouble, perhaps the Constitution would be found to be quite elastic." The next month, soon-to-be Republican National Chairman Henry Plather Fletcher expressed his concern: "[A]n administration as fully in control as this one can pack it [the Supreme Court] as easily as an English government can pack the House of Lords."
caption: Associate Justice James Clark McReynolds. A legal opinion authored by McReynolds in 1914, while U.S. Attorney General, is the most probable source for Roosevelt's court reform plan.
exif: {"Image XResolution": "100", "Image YResolution": "100", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image ExifOffset": "78"}