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FDR’s Gambit: The Court Packing Fight and the Rise of Legal Liberalism

byLaura Kalman

Laura Kalman revisits Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 attempt to enlarge the Supreme Court after conservative justices threatened major New Deal programs. She follows the political strategy, congressional resistance, public debate, and judicial shifts that turned an apparent defeat into a complicated transformation of constitutional law. The book connects the fight with the emergence of legal liberalism and later arguments about court reform. Kalman shows that “court packing” cannot be understood as a simple cautionary tale: it changed relationships among presidents, legislators, judges, and reformers long after Roosevelt's bill failed.

Publisher

Oxford University Press, Incorporated

Publication date

2022

Format

Print edition

Pages

—

ISBN

9780197539293