The defining legal history of a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court that gutted a key piece of FDR's New Deal.

On May 25, 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, the US Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that dealt mortal blows to New Deal legislation and presidential initiatives--a day known to New Dealers as Black Monday. The most significant of these decisions was A.L.A. Schechter Poultry v. U.S., which members of the press promptly labeled the sick chicken case. In this decision, the Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional, thus abolishing the National Recovery Administration and the hundreds of codes it had enacted. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced the Court's action, which started him down the road to his ill-fated plan to pack the Court in 1937.

As Williamjames Hull Hoffer shows, however, the sick chicken case is about much more than a single piece of New Deal legislation. It is a window into American society during the Great Depression and the New Deal--a 1930s America before World War II and the Cold War, the age of radio and movie palaces, and a time of experimentation with government that some likened to fascism or communism, or maybe both. More than a landmark law case that threatened the New Deal, but ultimately did not, Schechter Poultry is not just about a sick chicken; it is about a sick nation trying to heal itself.

The defining legal history of a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court that gutted a key piece of FDR's New Deal.

On May 25, 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, the US Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that dealt mortal blows to New Deal legislation and presidential initiatives--a day known to New Dealers as Black Monday. The most significant of these decisions was A.L.A. Schechter Poultry v. U.S., which members of the press promptly labeled the sick chicken case. In this decision, the Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional, thus abolishing the National Recovery Administration and the hundreds of codes it had enacted. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced the Court's action, which started him down the road to his ill-fated plan to pack the Court in 1937.

As Williamjames Hull Hoffer shows, however, the sick chicken case is about much more than a single piece of New Deal legislation. It is a window into American society during the Great Depression and the New Deal--a 1930s America before World War II and the Cold War, the age of radio and movie palaces, and a time of experimentation with government that some likened to fascism or communism, or maybe both. More than a landmark law case that threatened the New Deal, but ultimately did not, Schechter Poultry is not just about a sick chicken; it is about a sick nation trying to heal itself.

In response to the passage of the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, which prescribed equal but separate accommodations on public transportation, a group called the Committee of Citizens decided to challenge its constitutionality. At a pre-selected time and place, Homer Plessy, on behalf of the committee, boarded a train car set aside for whites, announced his non-white racial identity, and was immediately arrested. The legal deliberations that followed eventually led to the Court's 7-1 decision in Plessy, which upheld both the Louisiana statute and the state's police powers. It also helped create a Jim Crow system that would last deep into the twentieth century, until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and other cases helped overturn it.

Hoffer's readable study synthesizes past work on this landmark case, while also shedding new light on its proceedings and often-neglected historical contexts. From the streets of New Orleans' Faubourg Trem district to the justices' chambers at the Supreme Court, he breathes new life into the opposing forces, dissecting their arguments to clarify one of the most important, controversial, and socially revealing cases in American law. He particularly focuses on Justice Henry Billings Brown's ruling that the statute's equal, but separate condition was a sufficient constitutional standard for equality, and on Justice John Marshall Harlan's classic dissent, in which he stated, Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens.

Hoffer's compelling reconstruction illuminates the controversies and impact of Plessy v. Ferguson for a new generation of students and other interested readers. It also pays tribute to a group of little known heroes from the Deep South who failed to hold back the tide of racial segregation but nevertheless laid the groundwork for a less divided America.

A signal, violent event in the history of the United States Congress, the caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor embodied the complex North-South cultural divide of the mid-nineteenth century. Williamjames Hull Hoffer's vivid account of the brutal act demonstrates just how far the sections had drifted apart and explains why the coming war was so difficult to avoid.

Sumner, a noted abolitionist and gifted speaker, was seated at his Senate desk on May 22, 1856, when Democratic Congressman Preston S. Brooks approached, pulled out a gutta-percha walking stick, and struck him on the head. Brooks continued to beat the stunned Sumner, forcing him to the ground and repeatedly striking him even as the cane shattered. He then pursued the bloodied, staggering Republican senator up the Senate aisle until Sumner collapsed at the feet of Congressman Edwin B. Morgan. Colleagues of the two intervened only after Brooks appeared intent on beating the unconscious Sumner severely--and, perhaps, to death.

Sumner's crime? Speaking passionately about the evils of slavery, which dishonored both the South and Brooks's relative, Senator Andrew P. Butler. Celebrated in the South for the act, Brooks was fined only three hundred dollars, dying a year later of a throat infection. Sumner recovered and served out a distinguished Senate career until his death in 1873.

Hoffer's narrative recounts the caning and its aftermath, explores the depths of the differences between free and slave states in 1856, and explains the workings of the Southern honor culture as opposed to Yankee idealism. Hoffer helps us understand why Brooks would take such great offense at a political speech and why he chose a cane--instead of dueling with pistols or swords--to meet his obligation under the South's prevailing code of honor. He discusses why the courts meted out a comparatively light sentence. He addresses the importance of the event in the national crisis and shows why such actions are not quite as alien to today's politics as they might at first seem.

In response to the passage of the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, which prescribed equal but separate accommodations on public transportation, a group called the Committee of Citizens decided to challenge its constitutionality. At a pre-selected time and place, Homer Plessy, on behalf of the committee, boarded a train car set aside for whites, announced his non-white racial identity, and was immediately arrested. The legal deliberations that followed eventually led to the Court's 7-1 decision in Plessy, which upheld both the Louisiana statute and the state's police powers. It also helped create a Jim Crow system that would last deep into the twentieth century, until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and other cases helped overturn it.

Hoffer's readable study synthesizes past work on this landmark case, while also shedding new light on its proceedings and often-neglected historical contexts. From the streets of New Orleans' Faubourg Trem district to the justices' chambers at the Supreme Court, he breathes new life into the opposing forces, dissecting their arguments to clarify one of the most important, controversial, and socially revealing cases in American law. He particularly focuses on Justice Henry Billings Brown's ruling that the statute's equal, but separate condition was a sufficient constitutional standard for equality, and on Justice John Marshall Harlan's classic dissent, in which he stated, Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens.

Hoffer's compelling reconstruction illuminates the controversies and impact of Plessy v. Ferguson for a new generation of students and other interested readers. It also pays tribute to a group of little known heroes from the Deep South who failed to hold back the tide of racial segregation but nevertheless laid the groundwork for a less divided America.

How did the federal government change from the weak apparatus of the antebellum period to the large, administrative state of the Progressive Era? To Enlarge the Machinery of Government explores the daily proceedings of the U.S. House and Senate from 1858 to 1891 to find answers to this question.

Through close readings of debates centered around sponsorship, supervision, and standardization recorded in the Congressional Globe and Congressional Record during this period, Williamjames Hull Hoffer traces a critical shift in ideas that ultimately ushered in Progressive legislation: the willingness of American citizens to allow, and in fact ask for, federal intervention in their daily lives. He describes this era of congressional thought as a second state, distinct from both the minimalist approaches that came before and the Progressive state building that developed later. The second state era, Hoffer contends, offers valuable insight into how conceptions of American uniqueness contributed to the shape of the federal government.