By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Supreme Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices—the most by any president except George Washington—and handpicked the chief justice. But the wartime Roosevelt court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the charisma of the revered president.
Professor of constitutional law and criminal justice at Georgetown University Law Center Cliff Sloan explores this pivotal period and shares the inside story of how one president forever altered the most powerful legal institution in the country, with consequences that endure today. In an instructive tale for modern times, Sloan discusses the cast of characters that made up the justices—from the mercurial, Vienna-born intellectual Felix Frankfurter to the Alabama populist Hugo Black, and from the western prodigy William O. Douglas, FDR’s initial pick to be his running mate in 1944, to Roosevelt’s former attorney general and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson.
Sloan asserts that the justices’ shameless capitulation and unwillingness to cross their beloved president highlight the dangers of an unseemly closeness between Supreme Court justices and their political patrons. But, he notes, the FDR court’s finest moments also provided a robust defense of individual rights, rights the current Supreme Court has put in jeopardy.
Sloan’s book The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made (PublicAffairs) is available for purchase.
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Mwaka wa 1941 wakati wa miaka tisa ya urais wake, Franklin D. Roosevelt aliongoza mahakama ya juu ya Marekani. Alikuwa ameteua mahakimu saba kati ya tisa - wengi zaidi na rais yeyote isipokuwa George Washington - na kumchagua hakimu mkuu. Lakini mahakama ya Roosevelt ya wakati wa vita ilikuwa na nyuso mbili. Mmoja alikuwa mwenye ujasiri na maendeleo, mwingine alikuwa mwenye kujinyenyekeza na mwenye hali ya chini, akichukizwa na charisma ya rais anayeheshimiwa. Profesa wa sheria za kikatiba na haki za jinai katika Chuo Kikuu cha Georgetown, Cliff Sloan, anaelezea jinsi rais mmoja alivyobadili milele taasisi ya kisheria yenye nguvu zaidi nchini, na matokeo ambayo yanaendelea leo. Katika hadithi ya kisasa, Sloan anajadili waigizaji ambao waliunda mahakimu - kutoka kwa msomi wa Vienna, Felix Frankfurter, hadi Alabama populist Hugo Black, na kutoka kwa mchawi wa magharibi William O. Douglas, uchaguzi wa kwanza wa FDR kuwa mwenzake wa kukimbia mnamo 1944, kwa mwanasheria mkuu wa zamani wa Roosevelt na mwendesha mashtaka wa Nuremberg Robert Jackson. "Sloan anasema kwamba ""kushindwa kwa mahakimu na kutotaka kumshinda rais wao mpendwa huonyesha hatari ya ukaribu usiofaa kati ya mahakimu wa Mahakama Kuu na wadhamini wao wa kisiasa.""" Lakini, anasema, wakati bora wa mahakama ya FDR pia ilitoa ulinzi thabiti wa haki za mtu binafsi, haki ambazo Mahakama Kuu ya sasa imeweka hatarini. Kitabu cha Sloan The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made (PublicAffairs) kinapatikana kwa ununuzi. Habari za Uuzaji wa Vitabu