Franklin D. Roosevelt enters his second term at the height of his political power. Despite the Literary Digest’s famously disastrous prediction that Republican Alf Landon would win the 1936 election, Roosevelt carries every state except Maine and Vermont, winning 523 electoral votes to Landon’s eight. But even after that landslide, one institution still threatens the future of the New Deal: the Supreme Court.

In Part 5 of our New Deal series, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas traces the constitutional showdown that follows the Court’s repeated rejection of economic reforms. With major achievements of the Second New Deal, including Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act, still potentially vulnerable, Roosevelt turns to a dramatic solution. His Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 would allow the president to appoint additiona ...