Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution

Rating:
Summary: Great Debunking of New Deal Myth
Review: Cushman's book is an outstanding history of the "switch-in-time." He effectively debunks the myth that the Hughes Court did a sudden reversal because of Roosevelt's landslide reelection or his Court-packing plan. Rather, the key decisions that many scholars attribute to Roosevelt pressure had actually occurred before his Court-packing plan became known. In addition, the Court did not fear political pressure because they had survived it before and the majority of Congress did not support Roosevelt's Court-packing plan anyway. After debunking this myth, Cushman goes on to explain the structure of the real revolution, which was the "demise of constitutional federalism" that began with the Nebbia decision in 1934 and flowered in the early 1940s, after Hughes and his old-school colleagues had left the Court. Cushman's book is excellent: his arguments are sound and his writing is eloquent. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the real history of the Supreme Court during the 1930s.

Rating:
Summary: Great Debunking of New Deal Myth
Review: Cushman's book is an outstanding history of the "switch-in-time." He effectively debunks the myth that the Hughes Court did a sudden reversal because of Roosevelt's landslide reelection or his Court-packing plan. Rather, the key decisions that many scholars attribute to Roosevelt pressure had actually occurred before his Court-packing plan became known. In addition, the Court did not fear political pressure because they had survived it before and the majority of Congress did not support Roosevelt's Court-packing plan anyway. After debunking this myth, Cushman goes on to explain the structure of the real revolution, which was the "demise of constitutional federalism" that began with the Nebbia decision in 1934 and flowered in the early 1940s, after Hughes and his old-school colleagues had left the Court. Cushman's book is excellent: his arguments are sound and his writing is eloquent. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the real history of the Supreme Court during the 1930s.

Rating:
Summary: Understanding the Demise of Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism
Review: Excerpted from The Independent Review (Summer 2001) by Andrew R. Rutten

Contrary to popular opinion, argues Cushman, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped protecting private property and freedom of contract years before Roosevelt threatened to pack it. Too often Cushman fails to question the intent of various government regulations, but his analysis of the gradual blurring of the distinction between public and private spheres immeasurably improves our understanding of the demise of laissez-faire constitutionalism.

Careful readers will also notice an irony in Cushman's attempt to draw lessons from his story. Again and again, he tells us to beware the temptation to reduce law to politics; law, he wants us to know, has its own logic. Yet his own account suggests that politics inside the Court is a crucial part of that logic.

...those who are interested in the constitutional history of the United States will want to read this book. They should, however, have handy at least the most important of the decisions Cushman discusses, and they should read carefully-the raw material is dense, and so is the book. In the end, however, they will find they have learned more than they would have imagined, and not just about the period Cushman covers. The real lesson of the book highlights the need for a better understanding of just what it is that judges do and why.