Tag Archives: court packing

03/21/11

Old nine vs. New six

The title of this cartoon was “Furnish the Court…Assistant”, which was published on 2/6/37,by Elderman in Washington. This cartoon responded to the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, also known as Court packing plan. His purpose was to regulate the New Deal legislation that was ruled unconstitutional before. According to the plan, the President could nominate maximum of six Justices to the Supreme Court.

The six people on the top were the Justices that nominated by Roosevelt and those nine people were the old Justices. Those nine Justices looked serious and those six were not. I think the cartoonist tried to imply those six were just listen to President and support every decisions made by Roosevelt. So they were not taking thing serious.

03/21/11

FDR’s Favorite Sock Puppet : Supreme Court

February 12, 1937, New York Herald-Tribune, “Qualifying Test For Supreme Court Jobs”

Many people were very critical about the Supreme Court’s willingness to accept the New Deal. This cartoon was drawn at the time when FDR won his second term as president with a landslide victory.The cartoon shows FDR saying a command and the Supreme Court Justices abiding by what he said. The artist of the cartoon depicts the justice scales and the Constitution in the trash can.

According to Foner, “the court’s willingness to accept the New Deal marked a permanent change in judicial policy” and many begin to worry that FDR was becoming more of a dictator and making way for presidents after him to become dictators. Some felt that the court became more supportive of the New Deal because of FDR’s “court packing” proposal that he made to Congress (which was rejected). I think that some of the justices felt that FDR might replace them.

03/20/11

Ventroliquist Supreme Court

The caption of this political cartoon during the New Deal Era is called “Do We Want A Ventriloquist Act In The Supreme Court?” This caption was made to mock President Roosevelt’s court packing strategy. Since we know that the president appoint the Supreme Court justice, he can appoint a justice that is in favor of his many New Deal Acts. The cartoon also showed the packed court justice are like dummies who are under FDR’s control. They can’t speak for themselves but speak for FDR when they all say ” Yes, Yes, Yes, we all vote yes!” in front of uncle Sam. It shows how FDR used America government system well to support his New Deal plan. He wanted to make sure that all his acts can be carried out to help the poor effectively.