> . I've never seen a good
> > analysis on this question, but in the whole "Why No Socialism in the US"
> > debate, the role of the Court in making socialist policies nearly
> > impossible to enact for decades should be part of the calculus.
>
The Supreme Court also did its damndest to kill the New Deal, and didn't succeed. This was because Roosevelt responded by a) going to Congress with legislation even more liberal than the National Recovery Act, which the Court had just blocked and b) using the 1936 elections as a platform to denounce the court and fight for his reforms. Although his Court-packing scheme didn't make it through Congress, his major legislation stood because a couple right-wing justices began backing down in the face of overwhelming mass support for the New Deal, and others retired. Don't get me wrong. I'm no fan of Roosevelt. He saved capitalism--a goal I don't share. But, contrary to to those who conclude from the defeat of Reconstruction that the personal inclinations of nine justices are all-important, the ND provides a counter-example. It illustrates that Court decisions usually reflect the larger politics of the country instead of determining them. I think this was probably true in the 1870s as well. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20041120/e71e4e1a/attachment.htm>