Morganand the New Dealers

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ernst
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Department Of Agriculture ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
Previous Occasion

Readers of theNew York Timeswere not accustomed to encountering in its pages a Cabinet official picking a fight with the Supreme Court, but that is what they did on May 8, 1938. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, writing for a majority of the Supreme Court, had recently ruled that Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace had used the wrong procedures to set the rates that “commission men” charged farmers for marketing cattle, pigs, and sheep at Kansas City's stockyards. It was the second time the case had come before the Court. On the previous occasion, the justices had sent the case back to the lower courts to determine whether the secretary had personally studied the factual record before issuing the rates. In fact, Wallace had given the matter “more personal attention than any previous Secretary of Agriculture had ever given to any case under the Packers and Stockyards Act or for that matter any half dozen cases,” so when the case returned to the Court, the justices had to shift their ground. Now they objected that the Department of Agriculture had not revealed its case to the commission men, leaving them with no way of addressing the government's arguments. Wallace fumed that Hughes had implied that “the present Administration” was to blame for the procedures he followed, when in fact earlier, Republican administrations had established them. Besides, the procedures had already been revised in light of the Supreme Court's first decision in the case.

The Living River

Power Lines ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Needham
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Colorado River ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Grand Canyon ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
National Interest ◽  
Sierra Club ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Supreme Court

This chapter addresses how The New York Times challenged the long-held claims of Arizona officials that their state was entitled to a portion of the Colorado River by rights, a claim recently upheld by the Supreme Court. The paper also argued that Arizona's attempt to realize those claims endangered the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon itself. Transforming the flowing energy of water into flowing electricity, the Times suggested, was not in the national interest. Such critiques of Arizona's growth emerged in the wake of the Interior Department's development of the Pacific Southwest Water Plan, a plan designed in 1963 to realize Arizona's Colorado River claims. The critiques emerged from several different conservationist groups, but most powerfully from the Sierra Club, which was gradually changing the description of its politics from “conservation” to “environmentalism” and assuming a far more public voice in disputes over the proper use of public lands.

Media Coverage of the Supreme Court's Caseload

1992 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome O'Callaghan ◽  
James O. Dukes
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
New York Times ◽  
News Magazines ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
High Regard

Citizens hold the Supreme Court in high regard, and this esteem necessarily, for most, must be based on mass media news coverage. Content analysis of Supreme Court coverage by three networks, three news magazines and three major newspapers finds the press is selective in type of cases covered. The best coverage fit to actual types of cases decided was in the New York Times. All sampled news media gave more coverage to civil rights cases than the number of these cases would justify. First Amendment issues also received close news media attention, but economic and other issues did not. High public esteem of the Supreme Court is based on an incomplete look at the court's workload.

Constitutional Law in 1941–1942: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1941

1943 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-289
Author(s):  
Robert E. Cushman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Decisions

The vacancies on the Supreme Court caused by the retirement of Mr. Justice McReynolds and Chief Justice Hughes were filled by President Roosevelt during the summer of 1941. When the Court convened in October, Mr. Justice Stone, originally appointed by President Coolidge, became Chief Justice. Chief Justice White was the only other associate justice to be promoted to the Chief Justiceship. Senator James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, and Attorney General Robert H. Jackson of New York took their seats as associate justices. Thus seven justices have been placed on the Court by President Roosevelt. Any idea, however, that these Roosevelt appointees conform to any uniform pattern of thought is belied by the fact that in the 75 cases in the 1941 term turning on important questions of either constitutional law or federal statutory construction, there were dissents in 36, and 23 of these dissents were by either three or four justices. No act of Congress has been declared unconstitutional since May, 1936, when the Municipal Bankruptcy Act was held invalid. Since 1937, the Court has overruled 20 previous decisions, mentioning them by name, while it has modified or qualified a number of others.

scholarly journals The Supreme Court ofthe United States and the Law of Libel: A Review of Decided Cases

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 833-854
Author(s):  
Edward G. Hudon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Common Law ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Law

Pendant presque deux cents ans aux États-Unis, le droit du libelle a relevé exclusivement de la common law d'origine anglaise dont les États-Unis ont hérité au moment de la révolution américaine. Quiconque publiait, publiait à ses risques et périls. Selon le système constitutionnel américain à cette époque, toute expression diffamatoire, écrite ou verbale, même sans l'intention de diffamer autrui, était hors de la protection accordée par la constitution à la liberté de parole et de presse. Mais tout cela a changé avec le jugement de la Cour suprême des États-Unis dans New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, décidé en 1964. En effet, ce jugement a déclaré que le droit du libelle selon la common law était, en bonne partie, incompatible avec la protection accordée à la liberté de parole et de presse par le premier amendement à la constitution des États-Unis. Dans le présent article, l'auteur analyse les changements qui ont résulté de New York Times Co. v. Sullivan depuis que ce jugement a été rendu. Il montre comment la Cour suprême elle-même a, de temps à autre, changé son interprétation de ce jugement, explique que ce changement résulte du changement de personnel du tribunal lui-même et prédit qu'il y aura encore plus de changements dans le proche avenir.

Constitutional Law in 1953–1954

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-106
Author(s):  
David Fellman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
General Counsel ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
Solicitor General ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government ◽  
Law Degree

The membership of the Supreme Court remained unchanged during the 1953 Term. Chief Justice Vinson died on September 8, shortly before the opening of the Term. Governor Earl Warren of California was given a recess appointment by President Eisenhower on October 2, and was sworn in as the fourteenth Chief Justice on October 5. The Senate Judiciary Committee moved slowly, however, and the appointment did not reach the Senate until March 1, 1954, when it was confirmed by a voice vote without opposition.A week after the 1954 Term got under way Justice Robert H Jackson died, of a heart attack, on October 9, 1954, at the age of 62. For a man who had no law degree, Justice Jackson had done very well in the law. After a brilliant career as a lawyer in Jamestown, New York, he entered the government service in 1934 as General Counsel to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1938, Attorney-General in 1940, and was elevated to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt in June, 1941. He served as chief American prosecutor at the Nürnberg trial of top Nazi war criminals. Though appointed with the reputation of being a liberal New Dealer, Justice Jackson was actually close to the very center of the Court in many cases where the Justices were sharply divided. He was one of the most gifted opinion-writers on the Court, with a flair for felicitous phrasing and well-turned epigrams. To take the place of Justice Jackson, President Eisenhower nominated, on November 8, 1954, Judge John Marshall Harlan, whom he had appointed the previous March to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Harlan, once a successful New York lawyer, is the grandson of the Justice Harlan who served with such distinction from 1877 to 1911.

Originalism All the Way Down. Or: The Explosion of Progressivism

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-340
Author(s):  
Peter Martin Jaworski
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
Legal Scholar ◽  
Living Tree ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
Judicial Supremacy ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
Supreme Court Rulings

It is often said that the Constitution does not interpret itself, that we are in need of a theory of interpretation for constitutions. This need has led to a flourishing literature on constitutional interpretation. Statutes, also, stand in need of a theory of interpretation, and that obvious need has led to a robust literature on that subject. What is said too infrequently is that Supreme Court rulings do not interpret themselves, that we are in need of a theory of interpretation for rulings. In this essay, I assess the question of what is an appropriate doctrine of ruling interpretation by applying the arguments of the living constitutionalists to Supreme Court rulings. Contemporary proponents of a progressive doctrine of interpretation for constitutions—variously called the ‘living tree,’ ‘living force,’ or ‘living constitution’ doctrines of interpretation—appear to embrace two theses. The first thesis, which we can call the ‘progressive thesis,’ is the view that the Supreme Court ought to ensure that our highest laws are in compliance with contemporary values. The second thesis is the ‘doctrine of judicial supremacy’ which maintains that all lower judicial and non-judicial actors are to accept and adhere to the rulings of the Supreme Court.I argue that these two theses—the progressive thesis and the doctrine of judicial supremacy—are in tension with one another. Embracing the second thesis requires abandoning the first, while embracing the first thesis requires abandoning the second. Contemporary living constitutionalism, as defended by prominent advocates like Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, Justice Ian Binnie, Australian Justice Michael Kirby, legal scholar Peter Hogg, and others, is incoherent. In the end, those who embrace the progressive thesis must rely on the claim that the Supreme Court ought to have a monopoly on the use of progressive interpretation, and that lower courts and non-judicial actors must use originalist methods for interpreting the text of Supreme Court rulings. To make this argument, the advocates of progressive constitutional interpretation must be advocates of originalism—not half-hearted supporters, but enthusiastic, full-on supporters, however much they may, elsewhere in their writings, condemn originalism as a practically-flawed, unworkable, or unenlightened method of interpretation.

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