CONGRESS OR COURT?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 59, 11 March 1937, Page 7

CONGRESS OR COURT?

ISSUE FOR AMERICAN PEOPLE PRESIDENT’S RADIO APPEAL INJURY TO THE NATION BY POWER OF VETO QUIET, BUT INTENSE CRISIS (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) Received March 10, 10.30 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 when I made my first radio report,” he said. “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 the farsighted a crisis of far-reaching possibilities and injurious to America exists. “We are faced with the fact that the Supreme Court, more and more often, and more and more boldly, has asserted its power to veto laws passed by Congress and the .State legislatures. The Court has been acting not as a judicial but a policymaking body. That is not only my accusation, but that of the Justices who dissented from majority opinions vetoing recent laws designed to meet modern needs. The Court has improperly set itself as a third house of Congress, a super legislature. “We have, thereiore, reached a point where the nation must act to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself. 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 disregard the law to decide cases in the way 1 wished, then no President fit for’office, no Senate of Honourable men would confirm this type of appointees; but if the man I appoint and the Senate confirms Justices who understand modern conditions and act as Justices, not legislators, then I, and the vast majority of American people, favour doing just that thing. “Opponents urge a constitutional amendment, but it would take months and years to agree to the type of language, more months and years to get a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, and then a long course of ratification by three-fourths of the States. This process is too long and too uncertain. “My proposal is not to infringe tn the slightest on the civil and religious liberties dear to every American. You who know me cannot fear that I will tolerate destruction by any branch of Government, of any part of our heritage and freedom.”