細節
[ROOSEVELT, Franklin D.]. [SUPREME COURT]. HOPKINS, Harry L. (1890-1946). Autograph document signed ("H. L. H."), Warm Springs, Georgia, 3 April 1939. 3 pages, foolscap (15 1/8 x 10 7/8).
"A GRAND IDEA WAS LOST BY BUNGLING LAWYERS AND BAD POLITICAL STRATEGY"
A very unusual piece of New Deal history: Tommy Corcoran's reflections on the failed Court Packing plan, told to and transcribed by Harry Hopkins. Titled, "A statement to me by Thomas Corcoran giving his recollection of the genesis of the Supreme Court fight between the President and the U. S. Senate," Corcoran ascribes the failure to Attorney General Homer Cummings and National Recovery Administration lawyer Donald Richberg. "Our legal guns," Corcoran says, "were of very small caliber." It was Cummings and Richberg, he claims, who pushed for using Schechter Poultry as the test case for the constitutionality of the N.R.A., against Roosevelt's wishes. It was they who prepared an inflammatory Message to the Congress on the packing bill: "Cummings prepared the first draft, but Richberg added the venom." When Corcoran told his mentor, Justice Brandeis, about the impending move, Brandeis told Corcoran to tell FDR "that he was making a great mistake."
"The fight in the Senate was bungled from the beginning," Corcoran concludes. "The message itself was weak--we had no adequate line of communication with the leaders--the President's messengers were incompetent and perhaps disloyal...We missed a compromise when that could have been accomplished." Neither Cummings nor Richberg "had any influence in the Senate...Cummings went for a holiday right in the middle of the fight...A grand idea was lost by bungling lawyers and bad political strategy."
"A GRAND IDEA WAS LOST BY BUNGLING LAWYERS AND BAD POLITICAL STRATEGY"
A very unusual piece of New Deal history: Tommy Corcoran's reflections on the failed Court Packing plan, told to and transcribed by Harry Hopkins. Titled, "A statement to me by Thomas Corcoran giving his recollection of the genesis of the Supreme Court fight between the President and the U. S. Senate," Corcoran ascribes the failure to Attorney General Homer Cummings and National Recovery Administration lawyer Donald Richberg. "Our legal guns," Corcoran says, "were of very small caliber." It was Cummings and Richberg, he claims, who pushed for using Schechter Poultry as the test case for the constitutionality of the N.R.A., against Roosevelt's wishes. It was they who prepared an inflammatory Message to the Congress on the packing bill: "Cummings prepared the first draft, but Richberg added the venom." When Corcoran told his mentor, Justice Brandeis, about the impending move, Brandeis told Corcoran to tell FDR "that he was making a great mistake."
"The fight in the Senate was bungled from the beginning," Corcoran concludes. "The message itself was weak--we had no adequate line of communication with the leaders--the President's messengers were incompetent and perhaps disloyal...We missed a compromise when that could have been accomplished." Neither Cummings nor Richberg "had any influence in the Senate...Cummings went for a holiday right in the middle of the fight...A grand idea was lost by bungling lawyers and bad political strategy."