ABSTRACT
Top corporate chieftains made preparations to challenge the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act in the Supreme Court, with a long list of corporate lawyers employed by the American Liberty League taking the lead by means of a lengthy brief they already had prepared. Further, they obtained injunctions to prohibit the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from carrying out the duties assigned to it by the legislation until the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the act. More generally, the effort to hamstring the NLRB helped to create a new conservative coalition that came to dominate Congress on labor issues in 1939. The corporate community, with the Business Advisory Council playing a central role in placing corporate executives in key positions, increased its direct involvement within the government as the leaders of the industrial conversion to a war-based economy.
