Great Depression and the New Deal Term Paper

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Great Depression and the New Deal

Brinkley, Alan the Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. 4th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill 2004.

FDR Question

There is almost something comical about the level of the outrage expressed by contemporary Democrats regarding the appointment of John Roberts, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. While not to mitigate the importance of the Supreme Court as enforcing the law of the land, the fact that John Roberts might -- gasp -- interpret the constitution with a more strict constructionalist viewpoint than his moderate predecessor seems far less hubristic in comparison to President Roosevelt's efforts to stuff the U.S. Supreme Court with new numbers of justices. Roosevelt openly wished to increase the number of justices specified in the Constitution for the highest court of the land to make it easier for him to enforce his own legislative policies. While Franklin Delano Roosevelt attempted his court-packing scheme with an honorable intent, to appoint justices who would not declare the programs he believed were necessary to save the nation unconstitutional, such an action seems almost kingly in the extreme, given the specifications in the American Constitution for the number of Supreme Court justices.

However, in the recent American history of Roosevelt's day, other aspects of the American Constitution had been altered to an extreme degree. The election of the U.S. Senate directly by the people of the states rather than by the state senates of the land, the rapid-fire institution and repeal of Prohibition, and the creation of a federal income tax were all seismic legal as well as social changes that stirred political tumult in the land. Also, many social radicals across the American nation demanded even more radical legal reforms than the numerical expansion of the Supreme Court.

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Still, the idea that a president can tailor the court's numbers to suit his immediate wishes remains disturbing. One of the strengths of the Supreme Court is its fictional impermeability to the pulse of the nation -- as many justices appointed by conservative presidents, such as Justices O'Connor and Justice Brennan have shown their intellectual independence once insulated on the court. A president may desire to put his stamp upon the court, but this is impossible, given the capriciousness of human nature and the lifelong nature of a Supreme Court appointment. Regardless of the president's own desires or the so-called political pulse of the nation, or even the Senate's grilling, ultimately it is this life-long justice's ability to evolve and render reasonable legal opinions in response to the law as a lawyer, justice, and character that matters in terms of his or her qualifications. The quality of reasoning, rather than the content of the opinion of the justices is the best measure.

Questions on Chapters entitled "The Great Depression" and "The New Deal"

1.What caused the stock market crash is 1929? Do you see any way this economic catastrophe could have been avoided? Why do you think there is little historical consensus as to the exact causes?

The crash was caused by the preceding widespread speculative fever in America. For the first time, as the average price of most stock increased dramatically, the 'average' middle class consumer began to buy shares of stock in the market. Lured by the promise of easy wealth, the daily volume of stock traded on the market increased dramatically while not enough profits were put back into business in the form of real, long-term capital investments. Whether the brokers were to blame, the new consumerism, or the government for not….....

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