Transcript:

A dutiful and historic example is what happened to the minimum wage legislation. It has been before the Supreme Court three times. On the basis of the recorded votes of the individual justices, there have been seven who have voted in favor of its constitutionality, and six against it. Yet the legislation was invalidated, simply because a bare majority of the particular set of justices who happen to be on the court at the time was opposed to that kind of legislation. Congress wanted it, the people wanted it. Seven out of thirteen justices wanted it, but the other six did not, so the law went into the ash can. If that is not government by men, I would like to know what it is. Even the Republican Party refused to defend such a flagrant act of judicial usurpation. Ten days after the Supreme Court's decision arbitrarily brushing aside the New York Minimum Wage Act For Women, the Republican Party solemnly pledged itself to support state minimum wage legislation for women, and recorded its belief that such legislation is within the Constitution as it now stands. This is but one more public recognition of the fact that our Constitution is what the justices choose to make it.

Background:

On February 13, 1937, liberal Republican Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr. spoke out in support of President Franklin Roosevelt's controversial plan to neutralize Supreme Court justices who were hostile to the New Deal. Over the previous two years, the high court had struck down several key pieces of New Deal legislation on the grounds that the laws delegated an unconstitutional amount of authority to the executive branch and the federal government. Flushed with his landslide re-election in 1936, President Roosevelt issued a proposal in February 1937 to provide retirement at full pay for all members of the court over seventy. If a justice refused to retire, an "assistant" with full voting rights was to be appointed, thus ensuring Roosevelt a liberal majority. Most Republicans and many Democrats in Congress opposed the so-called "court-packing" plan. However, in April, before the bill came to vote, two justices came over to the liberal side, and by a narrow majority upheld the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act, acknowledging that the national economy had grown to such a degree that federal regulation and control was now warranted. Roosevelt's reorganization plan was thus unnecessary, and in July the Senate struck it down by a vote of seventy to twenty-two. Soon after, Roosevelt had the opportunity to nominate his first Supreme Court justice, and by 1942, all but two of the justices were his appointees.