Scorpions by Noah Feldman

Author:Noah Feldman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: HIS000000, Non-fiction, Politics, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780446575140
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2010-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 28

The Death of Fathers

On April 12, 1945, less than three months into his fourth term, Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia. The business of the Court ground to a halt as the justices, like the rest of the nation, tried to absorb the shock. It had been understood that Roosevelt was not well. But no one, least of all the electorate, expected him to die quite so soon. Across the country, adults cried freely. It was difficult to imagine American public life without the man who had dominated it for twelve years.

All who knew Roosevelt found his death in the midst of the war overwhelming. Jackson was particularly affected. The next day, April 13, Jackson was asked to address the employees at the Department of Justice, where he still had many friends, and where Attorney General Francis Biddle recognized him as someone who had an especially close relationship to the president.

Jackson told the assembled employees, who packed the Great Hall, that Roosevelt had been “one of the most commanding figures of world history.�� But beyond the fact that he commanded a military force greater than any ever amassed before, “it was the moral forces and spiritual aspirations of mankind that he really typified, and they never were so passionately concentrated around a single person.” Proceeding to the personal, Jackson spoke of the “innumerable little chits” that Roosevelt would write to all of those around him. “No father,” said Jackson, “could be more solicitous of the personal and family welfare of those in his circle.” By the time he got to the final paragraph of his speech, expressing gratitude that Roosevelt lived to see his country “on the threshold of victory,” Jackson had broken down.22

When Roosevelt died, the tensions among his appointees to the Supreme Court were not yet a matter of public record. To be sure, careful Court watchers who read all the opinions knew that divisions were emerging. Merlo Pusey, the biographer of Charles Evans Hughes, could say in 1944 that the Court was engaged in “a sort of free-for-all battle of judicial intellects.”23 Yet the battle lines were far from clear. Frankfurter had been on the losing end of the flag-salute case, with Jackson writing the stirring opinion flatly rejecting the Court’s earlier approach as expressed by Frankfurter. Meanwhile, Jackson had dissented in the Japanese-American internment case, while Frankfurter and Douglas had joined Black’s opinion. The opinions of the Court had supported the Roosevelt administration when it came to the all-important questions of loyalty that lay at the center of wartime jurisprudence. The fact that Frankfurter and Jackson were forming a friendship based in no small part on their horror at the positions adopted by Black and Douglas was not visible to the general public.

All that was about to change. With the man who had chosen them gone, Roosevelt’s justices were poised to splinter in full public view. The catalyst, though, was not an issue of great constitutional moment. It began with a dispute about wages. Should

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