Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 117

In opposition to the dual federalist “Four Horsemen” of the Supreme Court were three cooperative federalist justices who usually voted to uphold New Deal legislation. The press dubbed them the “Three Musketeers.”⁴¹ In addition, there were two decisive “swing” justices on the nine-member Court.⁴² In 1937, these two centrist justices joined the Three Musketeers to form a new 5–4 cooperative federalist majority.

Even though the two centrist votes that prompted this shift to cooperative federalism took place before FDR announced his Supreme Court–packing plan, they have sometimes been called “the switch in time that saved nine” because the shift they precipitated undercut the justification for expanding the size of the Court. Cooperative federalists won another victory at the end of the 1937 Supreme Court term when one of the Four Horsemen retired and Roosevelt had the opportunity to replace him. The remaining Horsemen soon retired as well. By the time President Roosevelt died in office in 1945, he had appointed all nine justices on the Court—the result of natural attrition and a presidency unhindered by term limits.⁴³

Between 1935 and 1943, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) created almost 8 million jobs.

The results of these membership changes were striking. In case after case, the Court went on to overturn dual federalist precedents. In April 1937, the Court upheld the National Labor Relations Act in a broad cooperative federalist ruling that rejected the rigid interpretation of the direct–indirect test it had used the year before. Now Congress could use its commerce clause power to regulate the production of goods as well as the transportation of goods across state lines. The vote in that case was still 5–4.⁴⁴ But only four years later, the transformation was complete. The Court unanimously overturned Hammer v. Dagenhart, a landmark 1918 dual federalist ruling that had held that Congress could not use its commerce clause power to regulate child labor by stopping the shipment of goods produced by children across state lines. In its new embrace of cooperative federalism, the Court dismissed the Tenth Amendment as merely a “truism.”⁴⁵