Today in Supreme Court History: August 16, 1933

8/16/1933: President Roosevelt adopts the Code of Fair Competition for the Governance of the Petroleum Industry. The Supreme Court declared those codes unconstitutional in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan (1935).

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Comments

[Professor Mojo]

...and got brought right back under the Connally Act that same year. Like the Wagner Act, this set the playbook: have a sweeping bit of legislation thrown out, make some narrow changes, repass it piece-meal, and wait for the next election to demonstrate to the Court that you have a mandate.

[Brett Bellmore]

We were really lucky that FDR wasn't younger and healthier; He's the closest the US ever came to ending up with a dictatorship, and he might have pulled it off with more time.

As it is, he frightened people so much that once he was safely dead they amended the Constitution to term limit Presidents.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

His health coverup puts Biden to shame, and he was at various times a fanboi of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin. He was not a good role model.

[Bob from Ohio]

"FDR wasn’t younger"

He was only 63 when he died. Arteries "hardened" leading to a stroke. If he had our current medical care, he might have lived a long time.

[bernard11]

Those terrified voters only gave him a 7.5% popular vote win over Dewey in 1944, as he carried 36 of 48 states.

[Bob from Ohio]

Politicians were scared. Politicians are people too!

They did ratify an amendment so people in general were concerned too.

[bernard11]

But I think the main motive was concern over anyone serving more than two terms.

Roosevelt was dead by then, after all, so people wouldn't have been particularly scared of him. It was just the idea of three terms.

It's hard to think of someone since then who might have been re-elected twice. I think Obama would have beaten Trump in 2016. Who else? Reagan, Clinton, Bush?

[Syd Henderson]

Not Bush. He was very unpopular in 2008.

[not guilty]

Ronald Reagan might have been elected to a third term. I doubt that he could have served that term out. He was losing touch with reality during his second term. Remember "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not"? (March 4, 1987.) Reagan's deposition testimony at the February 1990 criminal trial of his National Security Adviser John Poindexter showed several significant memory lapses. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-02-23-mn-1156-story.html

The Twenty-second Amendment was submitted for ratification with mostly Republican support in early 1947. The amendment by its own terms did not apply to the incumbent President Truman. It is ironic that for the remainder of the twentieth century, the only presidents barred from a third term in practice were the Republicans Eisenhower and Reagan. (Bill Clinton left office in January 2001.)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"But I think the main motive was concern over anyone serving more than two terms."

Yes, with an exception carved out for Truman (who was, however, probably too unpopular to get a third term).

A Texas Congressman with the apt name of Maverick wanted to extend the term-limit principle to members of Congress, but nobody supported him that I recall.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Considering the crises FDR had to deal with, and considering his long term in office, it's amazing how few missteps he made. Major decisions made badly would have been catastrophic for the country (the Depression) and the world (WW II),

"A second class intellect, but a first class temperament."

[The Margrave of Azilia]

If you mean the WWII crisis, the proof of the pudding is in the American victory. The Commander in Chief tends to get credit for such things.

Domestically, he wasn't so hot on the Depression (until war contracts goosed the economy), but the public preferred him to his Republican opponents, whom they probably associated with Hoover.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Russo v. United States, 404 U.S. 1209 (decided August 16, 1971): Douglas dissolves a Ninth Circuit stay of contempt conviction; applicant refused to answer grand jury questions and cites the circuit split on whether under the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1968 one can refuse if subpoena to testify was based on information gathered by illegal wiretapping; Douglas would normally jump at this, but no actual evidence of wiretapping

Bateman v. Arizona, 429 U.S. 1302 (decided August 16, 1976): Rehnquist denies bail to defendant convicted of marital sodomy who on cert will argue that consensual sodomy falls within right to privacy (but jury found that there was no consent!) (unsurprisingly, cert denied, 429 U.S. 864)

Board of School Comm’rs of Mobile Co. v. Davis, 84 S.Ct. 10 (decided August 16, 1963): Black refuses to stay desegregation order because it was made in accordance with Brown v. Board of Education and clear evidence that such an order was necessary (another example of former Ku Klux Klansman Black getting tough on his home state)

[JoeFromtheBronx]

J. W. Hampton, Jr. & Co. v. United States (1928) set forth an “intelligible principle,” broadly allowing delegation.

Various scholars have discussed the issue, noting Congress authorized broad delegation from the beginning. Roosevelt didn’t adopt the code, for instance, on his own. It grew out of the National Industrial Recovery Act, passed by Congress.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-6256-code-fair-competition-for-the-petroleum-industry

[note date]

A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States and Panama Refining (both 1935) were the two cases where a statute was struck down on non-delegation grounds.

The ruling below in Bateman had broad dicta suggesting consensual marital sexual relations could be banned for moral reasons. The case itself appears non-consensual, making it less cert-worthy.

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep429/usrep4291302/usrep4291302.pdf

The Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick selectively upheld a general sodomy ban as to same-sex sodomy.

There were a few consensual sexual relations cases arising in the lower courts from the 1960s and beyond. One risque case in the 1970s involved a marital couple filming a threesome.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks!

Most of those laws did not specify same sex conduct. Blow jobs from women were apparently perfectly o.k.

[not guilty]

The Georgia statute challenged in Bowers v. Hardwick, O.C.G.A. § 16-6-2 (1984), prohibited oral sex regardless of whether the participants were same sex or opposite sex:

(a) A person commits the offense of sodomy when he performs or submits to any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another. A person commits the offense of aggravated sodomy when he commits sodomy with force and against the will of the other person.

(b) A person convicted of the offense of sodomy shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than 20 years. A person convicted of the offense of aggravated sodomy shall be punished by imprisonment for life or by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than 20 years.

Hardwick v. Bowers, 760 F.2d 1202, 1204 n.1 (11th Cir. 1985).

Mr. Hardwick was joined in bringing the suit by John and Mary Doe, a married couple acquainted with Hardwick. They claimed that they desired to engage in sexual activity proscribed by the statute but had been “chilled and deterred” by the existence of the statute and the recent arrest of Hardwick. The District Court ruled that the Does did not have standing to bring suit. Ibid.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal as to Mr. and Mrs. Doe, opining that they had not been arrested or threatened with arrest for sodomy and did not allege in their complaint that they faced a serious risk of prosecution. Id., at 1206. Only Hardwick sought Supreme Court review.

According to Wikipedia, Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers’s political ambitions were derailed when, during his campaign for the 1998 Republican gubernatorial nomination, he admitted to a decade-long extramarital affair with his employee and secretary, a former Playboy Club waitress. The woman, Anne Davis, stated that the romance had been active as recently as six weeks prior to Bowers’s June 5, 1997, announcement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Bowers I wonder if Bowers and his side piece engaged in fellatio and/or cunnilingus.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks!

At least with Scalia, I’m fairly certain he never got a blowjob, not even from his wife.