FDR's New Deal

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how, in the face of mass unemployment, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted his "New Deal," a legislative program that was meant to give relief to wage earners and former wage earners. It examines the stance taken by some that it was meant to do more than that and how it was meant to change the social order in the United States. It also looks at the struggle to have the legislation passed by the Supreme Court.

From the Paper:

"Before the "Constitutional Revolution," among the laws the Supreme Court found unconstitutional were the Railroad Retirement Act, the New York Minimum Wage Act, and the "triple A," or Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, which would have given some relief to farmers suffering not only from the Depression, but the atmospheric conditions that resulted in the Dust Bowl and great migrations west. Roosevelt contended that the Supreme Court, in overturning those laws, was overstepping what was intended as its function by the authors of the Constitution. Roosevelt himself was, he said in a 1937 Fireside Chat, more concerned with "forming a more perfect union," than were the justices, verbally claiming a kinship for himself and his intentions with the Constitution, and verbally distancing the justices from it."

More papers on FDR's New Deal:

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