Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Constitutional War

This new history of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the "Great Constitutional War" is a critical, revisionist portrayal of FDR's personal role in initiating, with the advice of his attorney general, Homer S. Cummings, a "reorganization of the federal judiciary," or what in fact constituted a bald-faced attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court in 1937. No issue in domestic politics ever aroused the country>'s anger as did the presidential proposal to increase the size of the Supreme Court to fifteen by giving the president power to appoint a new judge for every justice over the age of 70 who refused to resign or retire. For background, the case histories which led up to this bold stroke are, for the first time, chronicled and analyzed in a setting that places the stirring events which ensued in their proper perspective. The importance of the book's subject, the thorough documentation, its reasoned and reasonable criticism, all set forth in a lively, but lucid writing style should give this book a popular readership that reaches well beyond academia.