Supreme Court Adapting to the New Deal

At the beginning of Franklin D. Roosevelt's second term, the Supreme Court was filled with nine older ultraconservative judges who ruled against many New Deal programs. Because of the recent victories in Congress and with his Presidency, Roosevelt believed that the people supported the New Deal program and thus the Supreme Court should fall in line. Since they wouldn't, he proposed the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill, which became known as the Court-packing plan, in 1937, which would allow him to add a new liberal justice to the court for every justice older than 70 who wouldn't retire. This was highly criticized by the public due to the implications that Roosevelt was tampering with the system of checks and balances.

As most assume is due to the public's support of the New Deal, Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts switched his opinion on the New Deal. After the case of West Coast Hotel vs. Parrish in 1937, where minimum wage laws were deemed constitutional, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of all future New Deal programs. Given this decision coming around the same time as Roosevelt's proposition of his court-packing plan, many believed he had succumbed to the pressure of politics and public opinion given his complete reversal on all New Deal policy. While in reality Justice Roberts' vote was cast before Roosevelt announced his plan, this did not change the perception of him in the public eye as most began to view the Supreme Court as willing to flip on their core beliefs. The fact that Justice Roberts had found a similar state minimum wage for New York unconstitutional did not help his case much because his rulings in the two cases conflicted with each other.
While this change in opinions benefited Roosevelt's New Deal programs, he was able to make 9 nominations and fill 8 out of the 9 Supreme Court seats with Democratic justices that he nominated during his 12 years in office. But even with more liberal justices of his choosing, fewer New Deal reforms were passed after 1937 due to the political capital Roosevelt lost during the controversy of his court-packing plan.

Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, James F. Byrnes, Harlan F. Stone, Robert H. Jackson, and Wiley Blount Rutledge were all appointed by Roosevelt. Wiley Blount Rutledge was the replacement for James F. Byrnes since he retired in 1942, still during Roosevelt's presidency. The one justice not replaced during Roosevelt's presidency was Harlan Stone, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by Calvin Coolidge and promoted to Chief Justice by Roosevelt.




Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Owen-Josephus-Roberts
http://supreme-court-justices.insidegov.com/d/d/Franklin-D.-Roosevelt
http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/nGetInfo?jid=2299&cid=0&ctype=sc&instate=na&highlight=null