In 1936, the popularity of President Franklin Roosevelt’s policies earned him the largest Electoral College victory in American history. The Supreme Court was decidedly less enthusiastic about the New Deal, striking down federal laws and executive actions as unconstitutional 13 times in his first term, while fully upholding only one. At the beginning of his second term, Roosevelt ignored pleas to amend the Constitution and tried instead to persuade the public (and Congress) to add six new seats to the Supreme Court. Yet public opinion polls found that a majority of Americans opposed court packing and that there was more significantly support for a constitutional amendment to achieve Roosevelt's goals, even among Democrats and those who think the Constitution is too hard to amend. The public was also deeply skeptical of Roosevelt's attempt to gain greater executive control over the growing federal bureaucracy and his decision to break the constitutional norm of serving two terms as president.
No major theory in political behavior can explain these results. For example, rational choice scholarship (e.g., Downs, 1957) posits that voters use elections to maximize their utility. So, why would voters favor a constitutional amendment when court-packing represented a more efficient way to prevent the Supreme Court from striking down more of their preferred policies? It is also axiomatic to the study of public opinion that partisanship structures the way people see the political world (e.g., Campbell et al., 1960; Zaller, 1992). So, why did so many Americans, including Democrats, stand up to a president they had just overwhelmingly backed at the polls?
This book analyzes New Deal Era public opinion and makes three central claims, all of which challenge existing scholarship. First, the public understood that the New Deal represented a constitutional revolution, not just a political realignment following a shift in economic policy (see Achen and Bartels, 2017; Burnham, 1970). Second, Americans distinguished between two dimensions of constitutional change. While many Americans supported the expansion of federal regulatory power (the vertical dimension), they were much less willing to support Roosevelt’s efforts to reallocate power across the three branches of government (the horizontal dimension). Other studies depict the New Deal only in terms of its vertical dimension (Ackerman 1991, 1998). Political behaviorists typically find that Americans do not care what tactics leaders use, so long as they result in policies that improve their welfare (Fiorina, 1981; Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 2002; Key, 1960). Finally, in contrast to scholars who argue that the public follows what political leaders want, not the other way around (Zaller, 1992), I find that public opinion helps to explain Roosevelt’s legislative successes and failures in his second term.
My project is theoretically interdisciplinary and empirically multi-method. Only such a triangulated approach can adequately address how citizens influence constitutional change. I first analyze early Gallup surveys about New Deal statutes, proposed constitutional amendments, Roosevelt’s court-packing plan, his proposal for greater presidential control of the federal bureaucracy, and his decision to seek a third term. I then evaluate an original dataset of approximately 1,200 letters written by ordinary Americans to President Roosevelt about the court-packing plan. The letters frequently include broader arguments about the constitutionality of New Deal principles and policies. This qualitative approach allows for a more granular exploration of the American constitutional vocabulary.
No major theory in political behavior can explain these results. For example, rational choice scholarship (e.g., Downs, 1957) posits that voters use elections to maximize their utility. So, why would voters favor a constitutional amendment when court-packing represented a more efficient way to prevent the Supreme Court from striking down more of their preferred policies? It is also axiomatic to the study of public opinion that partisanship structures the way people see the political world (e.g., Campbell et al., 1960; Zaller, 1992). So, why did so many Americans, including Democrats, stand up to a president they had just overwhelmingly backed at the polls?
This book analyzes New Deal Era public opinion and makes three central claims, all of which challenge existing scholarship. First, the public understood that the New Deal represented a constitutional revolution, not just a political realignment following a shift in economic policy (see Achen and Bartels, 2017; Burnham, 1970). Second, Americans distinguished between two dimensions of constitutional change. While many Americans supported the expansion of federal regulatory power (the vertical dimension), they were much less willing to support Roosevelt’s efforts to reallocate power across the three branches of government (the horizontal dimension). Other studies depict the New Deal only in terms of its vertical dimension (Ackerman 1991, 1998). Political behaviorists typically find that Americans do not care what tactics leaders use, so long as they result in policies that improve their welfare (Fiorina, 1981; Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 2002; Key, 1960). Finally, in contrast to scholars who argue that the public follows what political leaders want, not the other way around (Zaller, 1992), I find that public opinion helps to explain Roosevelt’s legislative successes and failures in his second term.
My project is theoretically interdisciplinary and empirically multi-method. Only such a triangulated approach can adequately address how citizens influence constitutional change. I first analyze early Gallup surveys about New Deal statutes, proposed constitutional amendments, Roosevelt’s court-packing plan, his proposal for greater presidential control of the federal bureaucracy, and his decision to seek a third term. I then evaluate an original dataset of approximately 1,200 letters written by ordinary Americans to President Roosevelt about the court-packing plan. The letters frequently include broader arguments about the constitutionality of New Deal principles and policies. This qualitative approach allows for a more granular exploration of the American constitutional vocabulary.