In the final installment of The New Deal, Judge Stephen Sfekas examines what happened after the Supreme Court upheld a state minimum-wage law and the Wagner Act, weakening the case for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s court-packing plan. The proposal failed, but Justice Willis Van Devanter’s retirement soon gave Roosevelt his first opening on the Court. He chose Alabama Senator Hugo Black, whose confirmation was followed by revelations of his former membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Black resisted calls to resign and later became a leading defender of civil liberties and joined the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Between 1937 and 1941, retirements and deaths allowed Roosevelt to appoint seven justices: Hugo Black, Stanley Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, James F. Byrnes and Robert H. Jacks ...