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Answering the Call: Leaving the Bench to Serve the President— James F

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Answering the Call: Leaving the Bench to Serve the President— James F Answering the Call: Leaving the Bench to Serve the President— James F. Byrnes and Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932–1945 SIDNEY M. MILKIS AND NICHOLAS F. JACOBS Perhaps no President in American the first woman ever to serve as a Cabinet history has figured so prominently in the Secretary, and who used her office to development of constitutional democracy as secure the rights of organized labor; and, of did Franklin D. Roosevelt. At no point in the course, the indomitable First Lady Eleanor country’s history did its leaders grapple with (the White House’sgadflyinitsreluctanceto challenges more profound than those faced take on the most controversial liberal causes, during the 1930s and 1940s, as they sought especially civil rights). These and other stalwart to come to terms with the disruptive effects New Dealers were critical FDR allies in of industrialization, mass migration, and the constructing a liberal Democratic Party and rise of totalitarian‐populism overseas. Given forging an executive‐centered administrative the ambitious reform program he envisioned, state that would make the aspirations of its Roosevelt could not have acted alone. There partisan objectives possible. was his “Brains Trust”—the group of university However, only one New Dealer worked professors who formulated some of the most as diligently, persevered for so long, and revolutionary schemes to revive the nation’s remained so committed to the success of economy. There were Roosevelt’s famed Roosevelt’s “revolution,” as he routinely administrators—Harry Hopkins as the chief referred to the New Deal: James Francis engineer of the Works Progress Administration; Byrnes. Only he was bedizened by Roosevelt Harold Ickes as the relief coordinator for the as “The Assistant President.” Byrnes and Public Works Administration; Frances Perkins, FDR were an odd couple: Roosevelt, the 72 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY New York patrician who relished the ex- Second World War just three months into ercise of power, and Byrnes, raised in South his tenure on the Court. After months of Carolina by his widowed mother—a hard- informally advising the President and the working dressmaker of such modest means Attorney General on the most important that her son dropped out of school at matters related to economic mobilization for fourteen to seek gainful employment—who total war, Justice Byrnes left the Court to styled himself an honest broker, rather than a serve officially in the administration: first mover, of government action. Yet, in first as Director of Economic Stabilization spite of their economic and cultural differ- and then as Director of War Mobilization, ences—or perhaps because they so well both positions having been intentionally complemented each other—Byrnes and created to take advantage of Byrnes’ rare Roosevelt formed a relationship that, combination of savvy politician and astute although largely forgotten today, is of legal mind. immense importance for understanding the FDR’s and Byrnes’ fruitful partnership scope of New Deal reform at home and the was so strong because, as different as they eventual triumph of American liberalism were, they shared the view that the New Deal abroad. Their partnership and genuinely represented a new understanding of the warm friendship also personifies the social contract—one that required the extraordinary tension within New Deal national government to assume new respon- liberalism—a conflict between its nationalist sibilities at home and abroad. FDR gave aspirations and a reverence for America’s voice to this new understanding of rights in constitutional legacy that still animates our his iconic State of the Union message of political travails today. 1941. Traditional freedoms like speech and Roosevelt—the President of the United religion, he argued, needed to be supple- States who audaciously broke the two‐term mented by two new rights: “freedom from tradition set by George Washington and want” and “freedom from fear.”2 These new served for just over twelve years—was the freedoms, representing for all intents and center of American life around which the purposes the charter of the modern American fundamental political controversies of the state, were given institutional form by the 1930s and 1940s swarmed. Byrnes remained welfare and national security states. Im- behind the scenes yet omnipresent—serving bedded in a modern executive office and a in all three branches of the federal growing national bureaucracy during the government while Roosevelt was President. presidencies of Roosevelt and Truman, these A first‐term junior Senator from South pillars of the New Deal political order Carolina at the birth of the New Deal, he transcended partisanship. The New Deal rose to become one of the most important state was embraced by Democrats and leaders in steering key reform legislation Republicans alike in the aftermath of World through a fractious Congress. In 1941, he War II. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the moved to the Supreme Court and, although first Republican elected after the New Deal, his tenure on the bench was a brief 452 days bestowed bipartisan legitimacy on the liberal (only one other Justice in American history, political order. Two years after his 1952 Thomas Johnson, has spent less time on the campaign victory, with bipartisan coopera- Court), he wrote several important opinions tion, he pushed through Congress an expan- during his brief stint that helped codify the sion of Social Security. The popular “Ike” new constitutional order.1 But Byrnes’ most also sustained Roosevelt’s and Truman’s important duty occurred in the wake of Pearl commitment to liberal internationalism, the Harbor, which pulled America into the view that America and her allies (particularly ANSWERING THE CALL 73 in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) A Junior Senator Becomes a President’s could be—must be—a force for good in the Trusted Ally world. Byrnes was such a critical ally to Yet this partisan consensus eventually Roosevelt because in Congress, the Court, unraveled, in large part due to the emergence and the executive branch he provided a of civil rights as a contentious, riveting critical link between the White House and drama during the 1950s. When Byrnes the bloc of impregnable Southern Democrats resigned as Truman’s Secretary of State in who posed the greatest opposition to the January 1947, he returned to his home in New Deal. As Thomas Stokes, the Pulitzer South Carolina to become a vociferous critic Prize–winning journalist from Georgia, of the President and the Democratic Party. wrote, Southern Democracy (dedicated to Elected as Governor in 1950, he became a the states rights philosophy of Jefferson) was leader of the massive resistance to the Brown the “ball and chain which hobbled the v. Board of Education decision, which saw a Party’s forward march.”3 Among the few unanimous Supreme Court denounce the Southerners who supported the New Deal invidious myth that separate could be equal. through thick and thin, Byrnes was the Byrnes not only joined most other Southern President’s most important ally in his governors in lambasting the decision, he also determination to keep the South in the fold became a leading architect of the Southern of a transformed, reimagined nation. Further- Strategy the Nixon Administration pursued more, Byrnes’ pragmatism—his willingness to realign partisan politics below the Mason‐ to support what Roosevelt dubbed “bold Dixon Line. Having abandoned the New persistent experimentation”—expressed the Deal Democratic Party he had so diligently President’s hope that the New Deal might worked to build, Byrnes supported Repub- forge a transformed coalition in the South lican presidential candidates until his death dedicated to economic security. Byrnes on April 9, 1972. shared Roosevelt’s belief that the New It is only by taking stock of this momentous time in history that we can Deal could work just as well for the share- cropper in low country South Carolina or the begin to make sense of this special relation- millworker in the state’s new boomtowns as ship between Byrnes and Roosevelt, a it could the urban factory worker. Both critical but uneasy partnership that illus- hoped that this new politics would compete trates both the great potential and stifling with and then perhaps displace the virulent limits of progressive reform in twentieth racial conflict that long had dominated and twenty‐first century America. Viewing democracy below the Mason‐Dixon Line. history through the lens of this alliance Central to Roosevelt’s New Deal Southern sheds important light on the effort of a strategy, Byrnes was a permanent fixture in President and his assistant president to meet the White House during the early years of the profound challenges of economic cata- ’ strophe and the rise of totalitarianism in FDR s presidency, even spending Thanks- giving with the President before his inaugu- Europe. And it leaves us with a new vantage ration to advise on Cabinet appointments and point to better grasp the causes of our their prospects for Senate confirmation.4 present political discontents: to understand ’ how a transformed Democratic Party almost Byrnes political savvy proved indis- succeeded in forging a new national com- pensable to Roosevelt as the President fi munity, but in the end, tragically failed to sought to bring the executive of ce closer make the South an enduring partner in the to the American people in a time of want fi New Deal political order. and desperation. During the rst press 74 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY conference of his administration, which controversial measures that sharply divided inaugurated the practice of inviting partici- the Democratic Party and aroused cries that pation by all correspondents regardless of he was a “dictator”—an indictment so their political posture toward the White resonant that the President had to go on the House, Roosevelt requested that Byrnes radio and formerly deny it.
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