| On February 5, 1937 President Roosevelt sent Congress a proposal to "reorganize" the federal judiciary. Emboldened by his 1936 landslide victory, Roosevelt conceived a plan to turn the crippling tide of the Great Depression by packing the United States Supreme Court. Discreetly buried within the text of the "judicial reorganization" bill was a provision that would have permitted the president to appoint to the Supreme Court an additional Justice for each sitting Justice who had not retired within six months of his seventieth birthday. At the time, six of the sitting Justices was over seventy; this provision would have allowed Roosevelt to appoint six additional Justices immediately, boosting the number of Justices to fifteen. |
