ABSTRACT
Presidents who wish to pack the Supreme Court, like murder suspects in a detective novel, must have both motive and opportunity. Abraham Lincoln had inveighed against the Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in the Dred Scott case during his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, when both sought to be elected United States Senator from Illinois. In 1863, by reason of expansion in the membership of the Court, Lincoln was enabled to name still another Justice, and he chose Stephen J. Field of California, a War Democrat who had been the chief justice of that state’s supreme court. Probably the most obvious laboratory test for success in packing the Court is the experience of President Franklin D. Roosevelt with his judicial appointments. The well-known checks and balances provided by the framers of the Constitution have supplied the necessary centrifugal force to make the Supreme Court independent of Congress and the President.
