Noah Feldman

Harvard University law professor Noah Feldman is the author of Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices. From his Q & A with Randy Dotinga at the Christian Science Monitor:

Q: The Supreme Court blocked many of FDR's New Deal reforms, prompting him to try – and fail – to expand and pack the court. Then its resistance began to wilt, and judges started retiring. What happened then?

A: Roosevelt got a chance to name an amazing nine justices of the Supreme Court.

He was not namby-pamby on this question. He wanted people who shared his views, he wanted liberals, and he wanted lots of them.

FDR's justices were allies while he was alive, but after he died, they developed four totally different theories of what the Constitution is, two of which are considered conservative and two of which are considered liberal.

Q: What does that tell us about how the court works?

A: Even if you put people on the court who have similar political perspectives, that doesn't mean they have the...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue