In "35 when they struck down child labors laws and the union of laws, FDR went crazy and he was like, "What should I do?" So he came up with a scheme in 1935 that, because Congress could regulate the Supreme Court, that they would pass a law, he wrote the legislation and was going to have it introduced into Congress, and he actually would have passed it. There's a fascinating book written about this. Roosevelt kind of screwed up the politics of it, he missed an opportunity but he could have gotten this passed.
He was going to have this law passed that said that, "Any justice over the age of 70 could no longer vote. They would become what's called a Justice of Martyrs and because there was to be 9 votes on a court, then all of the justices over 70 and aggregate would have one vote as Justices of Martyrs." No matter how many Justices of Martyrs there were, the Justices of Martyrs and aggregate would have one vote. Now that's when there were 5 guys who over 70 on the court. Then the president could appoint 4 new people to be on the court. So the court would end up, not with 9 but with 14 but 5 of them would be Justices of Martyrs; they'd only have one vote. So he would be able to get enough people on the court that he could pack the court and have them start ruling that his laws were not unconstitutional.
He tried to that, there was so much blow back from the Republicans who freaked and most Father Coughlin actually, who went nuts; got the whole nation inflamed about this and that is why after the election in 1936, not only did Roosevelt back away from his court packing but that gave the conservatives so much power that he actually scaled back the new deal which is why we slipped back into the depression of 1937.
So that was the one time in the history of this country when the President and the congress actually tried to use Article 3 Section 2 where it says that "The Supreme Court shall operate under regulations as defined by Congress." And frankly, there hasn't been a president or a congress that has had the balls to do it since then. But the constitution, in my opinion, and that of many legal scholars, the best book on this topic is actually written by the Dean of the Stanford Law School, is operating totally independent of the constitution. You have 9 kings here in Washington DC who decide what the law of the land should be, which is absolutely not just not what the founders thought they were doing with the constitution, but it's the opposite of what the founders thought they were doing with the constitution. Constitution starts out with, "We the people," not, "We, 9 guys with lifetime tenure in Washington DC."
Rob: Yeah, you said"
Thom: Have I sufficiently blow your mind?
Rob: Say that again.
Thom: I said have I sufficiently blown your mind?
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