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Real constitutional crises are relatively rare in American history. In 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall could have sparked one with his decision in Marbury v. Madison. In it, he deftly asserted that the Supreme Court had the power to invalidate laws or actions it saw as unconstitutional. That assertion didn’t cause a crisis in the fledgling nation mainly because it came in a decision that supported the Jefferson administration, and as such the president was not inclined to protest.
Then of course there was President Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme in 1937. In 1936, in the face of continuing 5-4 decisions going against his New Deal legislation, FDR’s Attorney General Homer Cummings proffered an idea penned by one of his predecessors in 1914, James Clark McReynolds: for every justice older than 70, a new justice should be appointed. Ironically, in 1936 McReynolds was a 75-year-old associate justice.
FDR’s legislation died in committee, but it would likely not have survived even if it had made it out of committee as it faced a great deal of bipartisan opposition. But it didn’t really matter because Justice Owen Roberts, who had been a thorn in the side of much of the New Deal legislation, joined the leftists in upholding West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish in 1937 and became a relatively reliable New Deal supporter going forward.
