Chapter Eight - Stacking the Deck

CHAPTER EIGHT

Stacking the Deck

FDR DIDN’T LIKE being told no.

The Supreme Court had spent his first term gutting his programs. They struck down the National Recovery Administration. They took a bat to the Agricultural Adjustment Act. They made it clear they weren’t just checking his power, they were threatening his entire project.

Roosevelt saw the problem clearly: the Court was old, conservative, and out of touch. Most of the justices had been appointed decades earlier. They didn’t believe the federal government should do half the things the New Deal was doing. They still thought the Constitution meant limited government, free markets, and invisible hands. FDR didn’t.

So he came up with a plan.

In 1937, right after winning reelection in a historic landslide, Roosevelt proposed what became known as the court-packing plan. The idea was simple: for every justice over the age of seventy who didn’t retire, the president could appoint a new one. That could’ve added up to six new justices, enough to flip the Court in his favor.

He framed it as a reform. He said the Court was overworked and the country needed fresh blood. But nobody bought that. Everyone knew what it really was: a power grab.

The backlash was immediate.

Congress didn’t like it. The press didn’t like it. Even some of Roosevelt’s allies didn’t like it. They agreed with the goal but hated the move. It looked like a strongman play. It smelled like dictatorship. It crossed a line people didn’t want crossed, even during a crisis.

For the first time, Roosevelt looked arrogant. Not strategic. Not inspiring. Just drunk on his own power.

The bill stalled. Public support dropped. His unbeatable momentum finally hit resistance. And he learned something important: even a president with a supermajority and national goodwill can only bend the system so far before it snaps back.

But here’s the thing, he still got what he wanted.

The Court, rattled by the public heat and the size of Roosevelt’s win, started ruling differently. One justice, Owen Roberts, shifted sides in a key case, upholding a Washington state minimum wage law. That decision signaled a new direction, and it’s known as the “switch in time that saved nine.”

Shortly after, one of the conservative justices retired. Roosevelt got his chance to appoint a replacement. Then another. Then another. By the time his presidency was over, he’d appointed eight justices to the Supreme Court. He didn’t have to pack the Court. He outlasted it.

The fight bruised him. It cost him political capital. But in the long run, he still reshaped the judiciary.

That’s how Roosevelt worked. He didn’t always win the headline battle. But he won the war.

And he was already planning his next move.