A Man, a Plan . . . When one branch of government declares war
on another. Aug 3, 2009, Vol. 14, No. 43 • By CHARLOTTE ALLEN A
slew of such death-dealing decisions, leading to public outcry
and the disbanding of some of the alphabet-soup federal agencies
set up to enforce the New Deal, infuriated Roosevelt. The court-
packing scheme, concocted with the help of Attorney General
Homer Cummings, was designed to neutralize the power of the
Court's conservative bloc, four justices--Willis Van Devanter,
James McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Pierce Butler--who had
been appointed years earlier by Presidents Taft, Wilson, and
Harding. The four typically voted as a unit, together with
whatever moderates they could persuade to their side. Under
FDR's court-packing bill, for every Supreme Court justice who
had not retired by age 70-and-a-half, the president could
appoint an additional, younger justice up to a maximum number of
6, swelling the size of the Court from 9 jurists to a potential
15. (As it happened, all Four