When studying the New Deal, one of the biggest things that stood in between President Roosevelt and his goals of bringing the country out of the depression were Supreme Court Rulings that deemed many of his bills to be unconstitutional. For example, they ruled NIFA, AAA, and a minimum wage law in New York to all be unconstitutional. In the case of NIFA, it ended up being replaced with the similar Wagner Act as part of the second New Deal anyway. Today, we have multiple minimum wage laws that are not deemed unconstitutional. Roosevelt's frustration with this was seen when he tried to, albeit by violating a core American institution and value of equality and fairness, add more seats to the Supreme Court in 1937. I started to think about how this check by the supreme court on the power of congress and the president might have actually limited the liberties of the American people by not providing them with what we believe to be basic rights today of economic security and stability. To what extent did this work? If this same logic is expanded to current political scandals, if it is one branch of the government's responsibility to check the power of another and they do not uphold this responsibility, should another assume this responsibly? Today we have the press acting as this final check, but if this too failed, would we have a constitutional crisis? Where do we draw the line between prioritizing a political agenda and upholding American values, say for the head of the justice department prioritizing an agenda that legally and constitutionally allows for the specific ignorance of an otherwise illegal act?
The main reason that his bills were seamed unconstitutional is because they ushered in a very heavily government run economy which scared many business men and quite frankly government workers as well. If society were to become so reliant on the government that it became impossible for it to survive on its own, than it would be at the government's mercy which is something that many people did not want for themselves.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I think that the main issue was that because these new deals were suppose to be taken as tests and experiment for the sake of solving the immediate issue of the Great Depression. Many were threatened with the idea of being lessened of power. Which is why this lead to many protests in employers and their businesses. In addition, this presented to the conservative said as very much governmentally ran and some even called Roosevelt's policies to be communistic. That many conservatives were scared that the people would be highly reliant on the government in the future.
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