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Trials That Shaped Us

Trials That Shaped Us

by Judge Stephen Sfekas

Government History

Season 9

Korematsu v. United States, Part 1: Fear, Prejudice and Executive Order 9066

Korematsu v. United States became one of the Supreme Court’s most condemned decisions. But long before Fred Korematsu’s challenge reached the Court, decades of anti-Japanese discrimination and the fear that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor had already set a sweeping government policy in motion. In Part 1, Judge Stephen Sfekas traces the growth of Japanese American communities on the West Coast, the intelligence assessments that undercut claims of a widespread security threat, and the fight within the Roosevelt administration over how to respond. He examines the political and military pressure behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, the law Congress passed to enforce military restrictions, and the curfews and exclusion orders imposed on people of Japanese ancestry, including U.S. citizens. The episode ends as plans for resettlement give way to forced removal and mass incarceration.

Season 8

The New Deal, Part 7: Remaking the Supreme Court

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. Jackson. Roosevelt also elevated Harlan Fiske Stone to chief justice. Without adding a single seat, he had helped create a fundamentally different Supreme Court. The series concludes with the political and constitutional legacy of the fight. The court-packing battle helped strengthen the alliance between conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats, even as Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum-wage protections, agricultural subsidies and labor reforms became lasting parts of American life. Judge Sfekas also weighs the enduring debate over the “switch in time that saved nine”: Did political pressure change the Court, or did better-drafted laws, stronger legal arguments and evolving constitutional doctrine drive its historic turn?

The New Deal, Part 6: The Constitutional Revolution of 1937

In Part 6 of our series on the New Deal, Judge Stephen Sfekas examines the dramatic shift at the Supreme Court that transformed American constitutional law in 1937. In West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, the Court upheld Washington State’s minimum wage law, signaling the end of the Lochner era and a new willingness to defer to legislatures on economic regulation. Just two weeks later, the Court handed down a series of decisions upholding the National Labor Relations Act, led by the landmark NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., and greatly expanded the federal government’s power to regulate economic activity affecting interstate commerce. The episode explores Justice Owen Roberts and the famous “switch in time that saved nine,” the carefully constructed legal strategy behind the Wagner Act cases, and the Court’s subsequent approval of key provisions of the Social Security Act in Steward Machine Co. v. Davis and Helvering v. Davis. From United States v. Carolene Products Co. to Wickard v. Filburn and United States v. Darby, Judge Sfekas traces how the constitutional revolution of 1937 reshaped the balance between the Supreme Court, Congress, and the federal government, clearing the way for the modern regulatory state.

The New Deal, Part 5: FDR’s Court-Packing Gamble

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 additional federal judges when judges over 70 declined to retire, potentially expanding the Supreme Court from nine justices to fifteen. What Roosevelt sees as a way to protect his agenda quickly becomes a major political battle. Democrats including Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler join the opposition, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes challenges the administration’s claim that an aging Court is overwhelmed by its workload, and Roosevelt takes his case directly to the American people in a fireside chat. As Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson tries to rescue the proposal, the fight becomes much larger than the size of the Court itself. At stake are judicial independence, presidential power, the future of the New Deal, and the balance between an elected government and a Supreme Court willing to strike its laws down.

The New Deal, Part 4: The Supreme Court Strikes Back

Franklin Roosevelt enters office with a mandate to confront the Great Depression, and at first, the Supreme Court appears willing to give reform room to work. In Nebbia v. New York, Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, and Perry v. United States, the justices uphold emergency economic measures and loosen constitutional restrictions that had long protected contracts and property rights. That cooperation proves to be a false dawn. Challenges involving oil production, railroad pensions, farm mortgage relief, independent agencies, and New York’s now-famous “sick chickens” produce a devastating series of defeats for the administration. The crisis culminates in Schechter Poultry, when a unanimous Court strikes down the National Industrial Recovery Act, the signature program of the First New Deal. Roosevelt condemns a “horse-and-buggy court,” while labor unrest grows and the Court’s legitimacy comes under increasing attack. Judge Stephen Sfekas traces the constitutional showdown into the Second New Deal, the rise of sit-down strikes, and the passage of the Wagner Act and Social Security Act. With Frances Perkins helping shape a new generation of carefully drafted reforms, the administration prepares for the next battle over whether the Constitution can accommodate the demands of a modern national government.

The New Deal, Part 3: The Great Depression and a Court Divided

Part 3 of our New Deal series begins with the 1929 stock market crash and the government decisions that helped turn an economic downturn into the Great Depression. From the Federal Reserve’s tight-money response and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs to Herbert Hoover’s spending cuts and the collapse of thousands of banks, Judge Stephen Sfekas explains how deflation, unemployment and financial panic devastated Americans who had no deposit insurance, unemployment benefits or national relief system. Bing Crosby’s 1932 recording of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” captures the desperation of the era through the voice of a man who worked, served his country and helped build America, only to find himself unemployed and waiting for bread. Then the focus shifts to the Supreme Court of 1933: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the liberal “Three Musketeers,” the conservative “Four Horsemen” and unpredictable swing vote Owen Roberts. Their backgrounds, rivalries, prejudices and sharply different views of the law set the stage for the coming constitutional battle over the New Deal.

The New Deal, Part 2: The Supreme Court Against Reform

By the 1920s, reformers were trying to limit punishing work hours, establish minimum wages, break up monopolies, and curb child labor—and the Supreme Court was increasingly prepared to stop them. In Part 2 of our New Deal series, we enter the Lochner era through New York City’s filthy tenement bakeries and the Supreme Court’s decision in Lochner v. New York. From the Court’s expansive “freedom of contract” doctrine to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s famous dissent and the rise of legal realism, this episode explores a growing battle over whether judges or legislatures should decide how the law responds to industrial America. We also trace the Court’s rejection of a minimum wage for women in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital and its narrow, sometimes shifting interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause in United States v. E. C. Knight Co., Swift & Co. v. United States, and the child-labor cases. With former President William Howard Taft now serving as chief justice, the Court becomes increasingly aggressive in striking down social legislation—bringing the nation closer to its historic confrontation with the New Deal.

The New Deal, Part 1: The Supreme Court Before the Revolution

Before the New Deal could transform American government, the Supreme Court had spent decades defining—and defending—a very different vision of freedom. In Part 1 of our New Deal series, we explore the legal and political ideas that shaped the Court before the Constitutional Revolution of 1937. From laissez-faire economics and Social Darwinism to the Contract Clause, substantive due process, and the emerging “freedom of contract,” this episode explains how judges came to view economic regulation and social reform with deep suspicion. We also trace the rise of corporate personhood, the beginning of the Lochner era, the economic crisis of 1893, the Populist movement, and William Jennings Bryan’s effort to remake the Democratic Party. Together, these developments set the stage for an extraordinary confrontation between the Supreme Court, the New Deal, and the changing demands of American society.

Season 7

Religion in the Courts: Galileo, Scopes and Dover, Part 4 — The Scopes Trial

After the Butler Act became law, the question was whether anyone in Tennessee would actually enforce it — and whether anyone would be willing to test it. In Part 4 of Religion in the Courts: Galileo, Scopes and Dover, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas turns to the famous trial of State of Tennessee v. Thomas Scopes. What began as a challenge organized by the ACLU quickly became something much bigger, as Dayton businessman George Rappleyea saw a chance to put his struggling town on the map, Thomas Scopes agreed to serve as the defendant, and William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow entered the case. But the real Scopes trial was far stranger, messier, and more complicated than its later legend. Scopes was not a biology teacher. The textbook at the center of the case, Hunter’s Civic Biology, embraced racist and eugenic ideas that would be unacceptable today. The ACLU wanted a constitutional challenge, not an attack on religion. Darrow ignored that strategy, Bryan’s famous testimony happened outside the jury’s presence, and the defense ultimately asked for a guilty verdict in order to appeal. This episode follows the carnival atmosphere in Dayton, the clash between Bryan and Darrow, the nine-minute jury verdict, the anticlimactic appeal, and the unresolved question at the heart of the case: who really won?

Religion in the Courts: Galileo, Scopes and Dover, Part 3 — Darwin, Bryan and the Road to Scopes

In Part 3 of Religion in the Courts: Galileo, Scopes and Dover, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas turns from Galileo to the origins of the Scopes case. The episode begins with Genesis and the creation of mankind, then traces the rise of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the publication of On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, and the broader social ideas that came to be associated with Darwinism — from social Darwinism and eugenics to scientific racism, imperialism, and materialism. But this is also the story of William Jennings Bryan. Remembered today largely through Inherit the Wind, Bryan was far more complicated than the caricature of a simple anti-science crusader. A progressive, a pacifist, a champion of labor and women’s suffrage, and a deeply religious public figure, Bryan came to oppose the teaching of Darwinian evolution largely because of what he saw as its dangerous social implications after World War I. This episode sets the stage for State of Tennessee v. Thomas Scopes by showing how Darwin, fundamentalism, Bryan, and the Butler Act converged in Tennessee — creating one of the most famous trials in American history, and one of the most misunderstood.

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