How To Influence The Judiciary And Lose Your Friends

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 This is the true story, kisah benar, of how the 32nd president of the USA, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, squandered his political capital in a failed attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court with his nominees to ensure its decisions were slanted in his favour.
But first, a sober reminder. We belong to the larger family of “great apes”, which also includes the gorilla, chimp, bonobo, and the orangutan.
And like all members of this larger family, we humans also first communicated with each other in a heady mix of grunts, growls, groans, gestures, and grimaces.
On this matter, we must hear out Cat Hobaiter, a primatologist who studies these great apes other than ourselves: “From a young alpha male to a 60-year-old grandma, these animals are gesturing all day. There is a constant back and forth between them. It is how they run their lives.”
ADSTo date, she has catalogued over 150 specific gestures in “The Great Ape Dictionary”.
In short, what we humans do with language, these apes do with gestures. An extended arm with an upturned open palm means “give me that”. A long, slow scratch can mean, “I’ll scratch you” or “you scratch me”.
These gestures should remind us how far we humans have come compared to the other great apes.
We have progressed from holding out an open hand for a gift to pocketing a backhander in the blink of an eye, or resorting to a quick nod of the head to indicate the matter can be “kaotim-ed” the day before yesterday for a bribe.
A chimpanzeeNow, back to the Roosevelt story, having made the point that it is in our great ape DNA - no I did not say DNAA - to get things done without resorting to words.
Supreme Court move that backfired
In 1932, Democratic Party candidate FDR was elected president. The country had yet to recover from the Great Depression.
Things were indeed looking bad. FDR enacted a slew of legislation, collectively called the “New Deal”, to aid and assist the millions of jobless, hungry, and destitute Americans. Industry and agriculture had yet to recover from the 1929 stock market crash, and internal trade had come to a standstill.
But for all his good intentions, these wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms hardly moved the needle. But he remained connected to the American public, directly addressing them in their homes, over the radio, using plain and simple language - his famous fireside chats.
It was not him to use jargon and jabber, or gibberish and gobbledy gook. His calm, reassuring voice, his choice of words and phrases, and his homilies came across as sincere and genuine. Especially among the section of society, that for want of a better term, can safely be called the American B40. He was their only hope.
32nd president of the USA, Franklin Delano RooseveltHe was re-elected in 1936, convincing the American people that he needed more time to carry out the planned reforms. They also trusted him to do the right thing. Then, seemingly out of character, he spoke in one of his famous fireside chats about the Supreme Court falling behind in its work.
He outlined his plans to reform the Supreme Court by increasing the number of judges from nine to a bench of up to 15 judges. He planned to nominate an additional judge, limited to a maximum of six, every time a serving judge reached the age of 70 and did not choose to resign.
ADSHe spotted a nice little chink in the Constitution. It doesn’t limit the number of Supreme Court judges, all appointed for life. With a bit of legislative cunning and some planning, he could pull it off. There were enough judges who would turn 70 over the following few months and years.
All he had to do was to rush the proposed reforms through both Houses, having alerted the American public to the need for this law. But we cannot say for certain whether FDR said these words in that same fireside chat: “I have never interfered with the court’s decisions, so what is there to fear?”
Over the next few days, the chief justice of the United States rebutted FDR’s claim that they were falling behind in their work. There was no backlog, no delay.
So what was FDR up to? The straightforward answer: he was angry and disappointed that some of his “New Deal” legislation had been challenged in the highest court of the land and struck down as “unconstitutional”.
But these same decisions of the Supreme Court rang like music in the ears of the paranoid American Right, backed by powerful industrialists, bankers, and media moguls.
They saw the “New Deal” legislation as setting the country on the path to socialism. And who knows, eventually even turning the country into a communist state like the Soviet Union, where private property had been outlawed.
And they were not the only ones who were against FDR’s plans to change the character and composition of the Supreme Court. His vice-president opposed it in public. His own Democratic Party soon followed suit. The speaker filibustered the proposed reforms. It was never put to the vote in Congress.
Eventually, the bitter FDR backed off. An essentially decent man, he put the long-term interests of the country first by not getting into a messy fight with his own party. Or do the unthinkable and sack and suspend a few judges, like in a banana republic. I like to think the lawyers would have gone ape, but who knows? But the saga didn’t end there.
‘New Deal’ wins favour
The Supreme Court now had a sudden and surprising change of heart. They took a more favourable stance towards “New Deal” legislation. No more grimacing in anger or grunting in disapproval.
The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) passed muster, injecting liquidity to promote homeownership. Several other federal organisations also came into being.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Corporation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority all played a vital role in kickstarting the sputtering economy. So much for judicial independence when they are pressured by the executive!
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission was formed in 1934Perhaps they feared that a twice-elected and popular president might make a second attempt at “packing” the Supreme Court if the judges remained out of step with the executive. Besides, the war clouds were gathering in Europe and Asia. The US economy was eventually saved by WWII, achieving prosperity and preeminence in a world destroyed by war.
And before I forget, the great ape system of hand gestures and grunts, devoid of a single intelligible word, is rich and full of subtleties.
It is not just confined to “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” or to vigorous hand gesturing, signalling that it’s time for the older alpha male to give way to a more youthful one.
But wait! What was that noise just now? Was that a hoot or a howl? More monkey business on the way? - Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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