The Supreme Court held that the Live Poultry Code was unconstitutional and that the conviction of Schechter must be overturned. First, the Court found that the president lacked the power to write the code, citing the U. Constitution, Article I, which states that all legislative power is to be vested in the Congress. Article I is thus violated if Congress grants its exclusive legislative power to the president.
The NIRA allowed the president to write new codes, such as the poultry code, so long as they regulated "unfair competition. Lacking such a principle, the NIRA effectively allowed the president "unfettered discretion" to create "new laws" without congressional approval.
Second, the Court held that the poultry code violated the Constitution's Commerce Clause. The Constitution limits the activities over which Congress may legislate, reserving all other activities for the states to govern. While the Constitution allows Congress to regulate " interstate commerce " under the clause, the Court found Schechter's activities had nothing to do with interstate commerce. Schechter bought poultry from out of state, but its offending conduct was confined to New York State.
The activities of Schechter thus fell outside congressional power because they constituted intrastate in-state commerce. After seven years of revolution and civil upheaval, Mexican President Venustiano Carranza proclaims the modern Mexican constitution, which promises the restoration of lands to native peoples, the separation of church and state, and dramatic economic and educational reforms.
Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. The law required a literacy test for immigrants and barred Asiatic laborers, except for those from countries with special treaties or On February 5, , white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith is convicted in the murder of African American civil rights leader Medgar Evers, over 30 years after the crime occurred. Evers was gunned down in the driveway of his Jackson, Mississippi, home on June 12, , while his Aaron began his professional baseball career in in the Negro League and joined the Milwaukee Braves of the major league in , Griffith joined forces to create their own film studio, which they called the United Artists Corporation.
United Artists quickly gained prestige in Hollywood, thanks to the On February 5, , Georgia formally adopts a new state constitution and becomes the first U. Live TV. This Day In History. That ruling, the historian Alpheus T. President, they mean to destroy us.
We will have to find a way to get rid of the present membership of the Supreme Court. These explorations proceeded stealthily; the president never mentioned the court during his campaign for reelection. Roosevelt, however, had concluded that he could not avoid a confrontation with the court; it had already torpedoed the two principal recovery projects of his first term.
Legal analysts anticipated that the court would strike down both laws. Roosevelt surmised that he would be unable to take advantage of his landslide to sponsor new measures, such as a wagesand- hours law, because that legislation, too, would be invalidated. In the days following the election, FDR and Cummings put the final touches on an audacious plan to reconfigure the court. Dissents by Stone and other justices, notably Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo, persuaded Roosevelt that he need not undertake the arduous route of a constitutional amendment, for it was not the Constitution that required changing but the composition of the bench.
Naming a few more judges like Stone, the president believed, would do the trick. FDR recognized, though, that a direct assault on the court must be avoided; he could not simply assert that he wanted judges who would do his bidding. Six of the justices were 70 or older; a scurrilous book on the court, The Nine Old Men, by Drew Pearson and Robert Allen, was rapidly moving up the bestseller lists.
But Roosevelt kept Congressional leaders, his cabinet save for Cummings and the American people in the dark, deceiving even the shrewdest experts.
Three days later, on February 5, , Roosevelt shocked Congress, his closest advisers and the country by unleashing a thunderbolt. He asked Congress to empower him to appoint an additional justice for any member of the court over age 70 who did not retire. He sought to name as many as six additional Supreme Court justices, as well as up to 44 judges to the lower federal courts. Aconstant and systematic addition of younger blood will vitalize the courts. It also triggered the most intense debate about constitutional issues since the earliest weeks of the Republic.
For days, the country was mesmerized by the controversy, which dominated newspaper headlines, radio broadcasts and newsreels, and spurred countless rallies in towns from New England to the PacificCoast.
Members of Congress were so deluged by mail that they could not read most of it, let alone respond. Both sides believed the future of the country was at stake. If Roosevelt lost, his supporters countered, a few judges appointed for life would be able to ignore the popular will, destroy programs vital to the welfare of the people, and deny to the president and Congress the powers exercised by every other government in the world.
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