The "Four Horsemen" (in allusion to the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Christian scriptures, first appearing in the Book of Revelation, a piece of apocalypse literature written by John of Patmos.
Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand tha ...
) was the nickname given by the press to four conservative members of the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
during the 1932–1937 terms, who opposed the
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
agenda of
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
. They were
Justices
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...
Pierce Butler Pierce or Piers Butler may refer to:
*Piers Butler, 8th Earl of Ormond (c. 1467 – 26 August 1539), Anglo-Irish nobleman in the Peerage of Ireland
*Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye (1652–1740), Anglo-Irish nobleman in the Peerage of Ireland
* P ...
,
James Clark McReynolds
James Clark McReynolds (February 3, 1862 – August 24, 1946) was an American lawyer and judge from Tennessee who served as United States Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Unite ...
,
George Sutherland
George Alexander Sutherland (March 25, 1862July 18, 1942) was an English-born American jurist and politician. He served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court between 1922 and 1938. As a member of the Republican Party, he also repre ...
, and
Willis Van Devanter
Willis Van Devanter (April 17, 1859 – February 8, 1941) was an American lawyer who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1911 to 1937. He was a staunch conservative and was regarded as a part of the Four ...
. They were opposed by the liberal "
Three Musketeers
3 is a number, numeral, and glyph.
3, three, or III may also refer to:
* AD 3, the third year of the AD era
* 3 BC, the third year before the AD era
* March, the third month
Books
* ''Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 1901 n ...
"—Justices
Louis Brandeis
Louis Dembitz Brandeis (; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an American lawyer and associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.
Starting in 1890, he helped develop the "right to privacy" concept ...
,
Benjamin Cardozo
Benjamin ( he, ''Bīnyāmīn''; "Son of (the) right") blue letter bible: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h3225/kjv/wlc/0-1/ H3225 - yāmîn - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) was the last of the two sons of Jacob and Rachel (Jacob's th ...
, and
Harlan Stone
Harlan Fiske Stone (October 11, 1872 – April 22, 1946) was an American attorney and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1925 to 1941 and then as the 12th chief justice of the United States from 1941 un ...
.
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
Charles Evans Hughes Sr. (April 11, 1862 – August 27, 1948) was an American statesman, politician and jurist who served as the 11th Chief Justice of the United States from 1930 to 1941. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the ...
and Justice
Owen J. Roberts
Owen Josephus Roberts (May 2, 1875 – May 17, 1955) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1930 to 1945. He also led two Roberts Commissions, the first of which investigated the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the seco ...
controlled the balance. Hughes was more inclined to join the liberals, but Roberts was often swayed to the side of the conservatives.
Opposition to New Deal
Though at first the court had accepted some of the New Deal legislation over the objections of the four conservative justices, in the 1935 term, the Four Horsemen, together with Roberts and Hughes, voided the
Agricultural Adjustment Act
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part ...
of 1933 (''
United States v. Butler
''United States v. Butler'', 297 U.S. 1 (1936), is a U.S. Supreme Court case that held that the U.S. Congress has not only the power to lay taxes to the level necessary to carry out its other powers enumerated in Article I of the U.S. Constituti ...
'',
297 U.S. 1 936
Year 936 ( CMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* June 19 – At Laon, Louis IV, the 14-year old son of the late King Charles the Simp ...
, along with the Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act, the Railroad Act, and the Coal Mining Act. In ''
Carter v. Carter Coal Company
''Carter v. Carter Coal Company'', 298 U.S. 238 (1936), is a United States Supreme Court decision interpreting the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, which permits the United States Congress to "regulate Commerce... among the seve ...
'',
298 U.S. 238 (1936), the Four together with Roberts voided legislation regulating the coal industry; the same line-up voided a New York
minimum wage
A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Bec ...
law for women and children in ''
Morehead v. New York'',
298 U.S. 587 (1936). The court had also struck down the
National Industrial Recovery Act
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was a US labor law and consumer law passed by the 73rd US Congress to authorize the president to regulate industry for fair wages and prices that would stimulate economic recovery. It also e ...
in ''
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States
''A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States'', 295 U.S. 495 (1935), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that invalidated regulations of the poultry industry according to the nondelegation doctrine and as an invalid use ...
''
295 U.S. 495 (1935) the previous May. Though the latter decision was unanimous, Cardozo did not join the opinion for the court (written by Hughes and joined by Brandeis, Roberts, and the Four Horsemen), and wrote a separate concurrence, joined by Stone, to state the view of why the delegated power of legislation in the code at issue was "not canalized within banks that keep it from overflowing."
The Four Horsemen would ride in a car to and from the court together to coordinate positions and arguments. They were vehemently opposed to the New Deal policies for unemployment and economic recovery, and they invalidated state laws regulating labor and business relations. The Four's votes kept Congress and the states from regulating the economy. These actions led many observers to the conclusion that the court was likely to be obstructive to all legislative efforts to cope with the depression, and to remain wedded to the precedents of the
''Lochner'' era. Some academics argued that the court's aversion to "regulated capitalism" confronted the country with "the question not how governmental functions shall be shared, but whether in substance we shall govern at all."
The result of these dynamics was a steady drift of the court towards a crisis; the 1935 term was labeled by Stone "one of the most disastrous in
he court's
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
history." New Dealers decried the court's actions as "economic dictatorship" and some communities even hanged the justices in effigy.
Reform Bill of 1937
When Roosevelt rolled out his reform plan in early 1937, all Four Horsemen of Reaction were over the age of 70. Roosevelt, who himself would never make it to the age of 70, indicated that the elderly justices lacked energy. He said, "A lower mental or physical vigor leads men to avoid an examination of complicated and changed conditions."
It was the success of the Horsemen in striking down New Deal legislation that led to Roosevelt's
court-packing scheme, a controversial proposal in February 1937 to appoint more justices in order to change the composition of the court. This was rendered unnecessary when Roberts, who had supported the Four Horsemen on several decisions during the 1935–1936 term, sided with the Three Musketeers in a
landmark minimum wage case in March 1937 (known as "
the switch in time that saved nine
"The switch in time that saved nine" is the phrase, originally a quip by humorist Cal Tinney, about what was perceived in 1937 as the sudden jurisprudential shift by Associate Justice Owen Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1937 case '' ...
"). This, together with the retirement of Van Devanter in June 1937 and his replacement by
Hugo Black
Hugo Lafayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1927 to 1937 and as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971. A ...
ended the Four Horsemen's domination of the court. Black and Roosevelt considered the Four the "
direct descendants of Darwin and Spencer."
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
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Supreme Court of the United States people
Quartets