The Senate buries Roosevelt's plan to add justices, 70 to 20
By early 1937, the Supreme Court had struck down measure after measure of Roosevelt's New Deal, and the President decided the bench itself was the obstacle. On February 5 he proposed adding up to six new justices, one for every sitting member over 70 who refused to retire. Fellow Democrats broke with him, Vice President Garner gave the plan a thumbs down from the back of the Senate chamber, and on July 22, 1937, the Senate voted 70-20 to send the bill back to committee, killing it.
A president at the height of his popularity tried to reshape a co-equal branch and lost to his own party. The Court, meanwhile, began upholding New Deal legislation anyway, a shift historians call "the switch in time that saved nine," one that changed the course of constitutional law without a single seat changing hands.
QWhat did Vice President Garner do from the back of the Senate chamber?
John Nance Garner, Roosevelt's own vice president, opposed the plan without saying a word. Standing at the rear of the Senate chamber during the debate, he held his nose with one hand and gave a thumbs down with the other, a verdict from the second-highest official in the administration that the bill was rotten. Garner's gesture became one of the enduring images of the fight: the deepest opposition to the plan came from inside Roosevelt's own party and even his own ticket.
QHow did Roosevelt try to sell the plan to the public directly?
On March 9, 1937, a month after introducing the bill, Roosevelt took his case straight to American living rooms in a fireside chat, asking listeners whether justice was served when the Court was forced to decline hearing 87 percent of the cases private litigants brought before it. It was a striking, specific statistic meant to paint an overworked judiciary in need of relief. Chief Justice Hughes flatly contradicted the premise in his own letter to the Senate, denying any such backlog existed.
QWhat unplanned event derailed the bill's chances in the Senate?
Senate Majority Leader Joseph Taylor Robinson was the administration's most important vote-counter and its most committed champion for the bill on the floor. In the middle of the debate, he died suddenly of a heart attack, removing the one person best positioned to whip votes and hold the coalition together. His death came on top of months of delay from Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Ashurst, and the plan lost its floor general.
