President Roosevelt's response to all of this was stunning and unexpected. On February 5, 1937 he sent a special message to Congress proposing legislation granting the President new powers to add additional judges to all federal courts whenever there were sitting judges age 70 or older who refused to retire. Couching his argument as a reform to help relieve the workload burden on the courts, President Roosevelt's unusually blunt language made it clear what he really had in mind: "A part of the problem of obtaining a sufficient number of judges to dispose of cases is the capacity of the judges themselves. This brings forward the question of aged or infirm judges--a subject of delicacy and yet one which requires frank discussion. In exceptional cases, of course, judges, like other men, retain to an advanced age full mental and physical vigor. Those not so fortunate are often unable to perceive their own infirmities. . . A lower mental or physical vigor leads men to avoid an examination of complicated and changed conditions. Little by little, new facts become blurred through old glasses fitted, as it were, for the needs of another generation; older men, assuming that the scene is the same as it was in the past, cease to explore or inquire into the present or the future." 3
The practical effect of this proposal was that the President would get to appoint six new Justices to the Supreme Court (and 44 judges to lower federal courts) thus instantly tipping the political balance on the Court dramatically in his favor. The debate on this proposal was heated, widespread and over in six months. The President would be decisively rebuffed, his reputation in history tarnished for all time. But the Court, it seemed, got the message and suddenly shifted its course. Beginning with a set of decisions in March, April and May 1937 (including the Social Security Act cases) the Court would sustain a series of New Deal legislation, producing a "constitutional revolution in the age of Roosevelt." 4