The New Deal in the Courts

Report Outline
The Supreme Court and the Recovery Legislation
Challenges to New Deal Measures Under Commerce Clause
Questions Under Delegation of Powers
Decisions Upholding State Emergency Laws

The Supreme Court and the Recovery Legislation

What will be the fate of the New Deal legislation when passed upon by the Supreme Court? This question, first asked more than a year ago when the President's emergency program was being rapidly put through Congress, still awaits an answer. No decision passing upon the constitutionality of any of the New Deal measures has yet been handed down by the highest court and in the lower courts the decisions in cases arising under the recovery legislation have shown no consistent trend of judicial opinion.

In the lower federal courts decisions on applications of the National Industrial Recovery Act have ranged from those upholding (and denying) the validity of price fixing in such local trades as cleaning and dyeing to the opinion of Judge Dawson of the Federal District Court as Louisville, May 19, 1934, that the act as applied to local business constitutes “the boldest kind of usurpation, dared by the authorities and tolerated by the public only because of the bewilderment of the people in the present emergency.”

The decisions of the lower courts indicate possible future lines of action by the Supreme Court of the United States, but the most reliable clues as to the ultimate faring of the New Deal in the highest court are those afforded by its own decisions during the 1933–34 term in which related emergency measures of the states have been upheld.