THE COURT AT WAR

The achievements, positive and negative, of the Supreme Court in Franklin Roosevelt’s later presidency.

When World War II broke out, writes Georgetown law professor Sloan, Roosevelt had appointed seven of the nine men serving on the Supreme Court, “the most Justices appointed by a president since George Washington.” The court was inclined to loyalty toward the president, but they were not above the ordinary frictions and squabbles among themselves. Hugo Black, for instance, had once been a member of the KKK. Even though he had become a convert to progressivism, he had little liking for Felix Frankfurter, who gave off an air of professorial arrogance, and their relationship would, “over time, become increasingly intense and toxic.” The court tended to divide over some issues but not others. It came together in what has since been much-studied, much-contested back-channel lobbying on the part of the White House to try and execute a group of alleged Nazi spies without the benefit of a trial, something the justices never really bothered to explain and certainly not at the time. Then there was the matter of Japanese internment during the war, about which numerous justices offered rather tortuous arguments. Black, for example, argued that “hardships are part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships. All citizens alike, both in and out of uniform, feel the impact of war in greater or lesser measure.” Strangely, some lawsuits by detained Japanese received more favorable rulings, even if Chief Justice Harlan Stone did refer to the class as “the mass of Jap citizens.” Furthermore, writes Sloan, the court made numerous unexpectedly farsighted rulings during the war years that would help set later precedents to support marriage equality, equal employment opportunities, and civil rights, including the constitutional right of Black citizens to vote.

A wide-ranging legal history that shows that the Supreme Court is never truly divorced from the politics of the day.