“MUST SAVE COURT FROM ITSELF”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20673, 11 March 1937, Page 9

“MUST SAVE COURT FROM ITSELF”

JUDICIARY PLAN IN AMERICA PRESIDENT’S STRONG CRITICISM ALLEGED PARTISANSHIP OF JUSTICES United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received March 10, 9 30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, March 10. President Roosevelt, in a radio fireside chat appealed directly to the people to support the judiciary proposals. “I am reminded of March four years ago,’’ said the President, “when I made my first radio report. We were then in the midst of a great banking crisis. Now we are faced with a quiet crisis. There are no lines of depositors outside closed banks, but to a far-sighted crisis with far-reaching possibilities of injury to America. We are faced with the fact that the Supreme Court has more and more often and more and more boldly asserted it power to veto the laws passed by Congress and the State Legislatures. In the past four years the sound rule of giving the statutes the benefit of all reasonable doubt, has been cast aside, and the Court has been acting not as a judicial court, but as a policy-making body. That is not only my accusation, but that of the Justices who have dissented from the majority of the opinions. In vetoing of recent laws designed to meet the modern needs the Court improperly set itself as a third House and Congress—a super legislature. We have therefore reached a point in the nation where we must act to save the Constitution from the Court, and the Court from itself. The opponents seek to arouse prejudice and fear by crying that I am seeking to pack the Court. If the meaning of that phrase is that I wish to place on the bench spineless puppets who will disregard the law and decide cases in the way I wished, then no President fit for office would appoint and no Senate of honourable men would confirm this type. But if they mean that I will appoint and the Senate will confirm the appointment of Justices who understand modern conditions and will act as Justices and not legislators, then I and the vast majority of the American people favour doing just that thing. Now my opponents urge a Constitutional amendment but it will take months and years to agree to the type of language, and more months and years to get a two-thirds majority in the house and the Senate, then the long course of ratification by threefourths of the States. This process is too long and too uncertain. My proposal is not to infringe in the slightest on the civil and religious liberties dear to every American. You who know me cannot fear I would tolerate the destruction by any branch of Government or any part of our heritage of freedom.”