Changing Court
Bunn, Charles
Changing Court The Supreme Court: constitutional revolution in retrospect, by Bernard Schwartz. Ronald Press. 429 pp. $6.50. Reviewed by Charles Bunn FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT became • President in...
...be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law...
...In a whole series of important cases between 1934 and 1941, New Deal laws and regulations were tested against these large and honored words...
...Much of the writing about them is exciting too...
...From that date until World War II the main drives of his Administration were to get the country out of the depression and to control the economic "evils" which, it was thought, had brought it there...
...The emphasis of doctrine changes with new pressures, new problems, and new men, from Marshall to Taney quite as much as from Hughes 1930 to Hughes 1941, or from either Hughes to Stone to Vinson to Warren...
...BARBARA MILLER SOLOMON teaches American history and social studies at Wheelock College in Boston...
...Schwartz must be sorry that he had to stop before the spring of 1957: some of his conclusions about current trends in individual liberties would surely be much modified by the cases that came down after he closed his record...
...Surely not all change is good, and a judgment about each particular decision depends upon one's guess as to its wisdom...
...That was defeated in the Congress, but by 1937 the government was winning more decisions in the Court...
...By 1941 that war was over: collective bargaining for unions, control of acreage for farmers, the cheaper dollar for indebted businesses, minimum wages, limited work-hours, and social security for employes in industry, had all been held within the power of Congress...
...To this necessary fact of change Schwartz seems ambivalent, like most of us...
...The law which altereth not has never been, and cannot be, an attainable objective in the construction of a document which is the Constitution of a government—a constitution, as Marshall told us, "intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs...
...I think the reason this book is not is that too many cases are summarized too briefly, with too much repetition, and without the detail that gives color and so often throws light upon results...
...The legal tools were Acts of Congress and executive orders and administrative regulations under them...
...She is the author of "Ancestors and Immigrants" and "Pioneers in Service...
...But I seem to detect in Schwartz's book, more than in most writing about constitutional decisions, a longing for the good old days...
...Their effectiveness depended not on their wisdom, but on whether they could stand up against Constitutional attack...
...Surely the times were far from dull, and the cases as they came down were exciting...
...The New Deal won some decisions, but it lost enough to push the President and his Attorney General to the Court-backing plan...
...Those decisions are the "Constitutional Revolution" in the title of Schwartz's book...
...The controlling clauses of the Constitution were those empowering THEODORE KAGHAN, foreign affairs analyst for the New York Post, served the U.S...
...CHARLES BUNN is a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School...
...But that is the common fate of writers on the Constitution...
...The book is detailed, thorough, and to me quite dull...
...Recognizing its necessity, he sometimes applauds, but more often condemns, the change that actually happens...
...This is not so much a book about the Court as it is one about the Court's decisions upon constitutional questions in the years 1934 through 1956...
...government in Germany after World War II...
...But that is a personal judgment: other people have found the book good reading, and maybe you will too...
...Congress "to lay and collect taxes" (and so to appropriate money), "to borrow money on the credit of the United States," "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states," "to coin money, [and] regulate the value thereof," and commanding that "No person shall...
...Reviewed by Charles Bunn FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT became • President in 1933...
...He reviews them, and goes into much detail about what has happened since...
...I have tried hard to figure why this last is so...
Vol. 22 • January 1958 • No. 1
