Is Criticism of the Court Politically Damaging?
Dahlia Lithwick has an excellent response to claims (from both predictable and normally more astute quarters) that Obama is likely to pay some kind of political price for attacking the Court over Citizens United. It’s particularly strange to invoke FDR in an argument like this; while it’s true that the Court-packing plan itself failed, it was followed by 1)one of the most productive legislative periods in history that 2)the Supreme Court stopped interfering with. I’m not really seeing the big political price there. And, indeed, assumptions that criticisms of the Court will harm presidential authority pretty much stand history on its head: the Court’s most prominent White House critics include presidents like Jefferson and Lincoln and Reagan.
This isn’t to say that a President couldn’t incur political courts from attacking the Court. But these costs certainly wouldn’t come in a case — like this one — where public opinion is overwhelmingly on the president’s side.
Andrew Jackson would have to be number one on this list, no?
Process arguments are bunk, until proven otherwise. If the voters at large are sympathetic to Obama’s critique, they’ll be okay with it. If not, then not.
If you just replace ‘voters with ‘David Broder,’ the argument works.
Huh? How so? Roosevelt’s first term was one of the most productive legislative periods in history. Then came the court-packing scheme at the beginning of the second term, which was followed by enough Republican victories in the 1938 midterms to prevent any further domestic legislation of note for the rest of Roosevelt’s presidency.
But in that period, a great deal of crucial legislation was passed, and there is no reason at all to believe that the court-packing plan was a significant factor in 1938. So I stand by my argument.
After the court packing plan, what passed?
From what I remember it allowed those who were to scared to go against the New Deal to be against a ‘power grab’ – like VP Garner.
Cutting the deficit didn’t help either.
If memory serves, FDR was within a single vote of carrying the senate until the (un)timely death of a single member. It was a very close ran race.
It’s unhealthy for the Executive or Legislative branch to pull their rhetorical punches in deference to The Court. In any event (and more to the point), I submit those days are long gone. The functioning concept of the “peoples airwaves” is as dead as Julius Caesar. That pulpit has been proscribed by corporations. And that pulpit is the one that counts.