Did FDR propose economic constitutional amendments? [View All]

[wyldwolf]

The Constitution, in article V, is very clear on how amendments are proposed and implemented.

Recently, during a conversation, two contemporaries of mine made a claim that Franklin Roosevelt proposed a Constitutional Amendment making it a "right" to own a home and have a job, based on his call for a Second Bill Of (Economic)Rights. Their arguments subtly changed as the discussion went on, first that FDR wanted to make those "rights" constitutional amendments, then that he actually did propose amending the constitution:

Roosevelt wanted to drop welfare for better things like a Constitutional right to a job and a Constitutional right to a home.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2337336&mesg_id=2339145

The key word is Roosevelt WANTED to make these Constitutional
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2337336&mesg_id=2340215

Straw Man Alert... A Second Bill of Rights are Constitutional Amendments
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2337336&mesg_id=2341052

Me, being the type who likes to have at least some sort of corroboration, insisted on some proof that FDR WANTED to make constitutional amendments and proof that he actually proposed constitutional amendments. One of the people I was discussing it with contended that FDR speaking of his second Bill Of (Economic) Rights in a State of the Union address was tantamount to proposing constitutional amendments:

to deny that a call for a Second Bill of Rights from the PRESIDENTIAL bully pulpit is not to be interpreted as a CALL for CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS is insanly deaf dumb and blind.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2337336&mesg_id=2341096

Now, I repeatedly asked for proof beyond the link to the State of The Union address that kept being presented as proof, but all I got was the standard, "I've given you proof," and attempts to veer the discussion of on to other topics that had nothing to do with the discussion, like:

Do you agree with the proposition that great violence has been done to our Constitution by this administration?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2337336&mesg_id=2342434

Do they know about Operation Northwoods? or how about Operation Mockingbird?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2337336&mesg_id=2340996

Of course, if anyone here personally KNEW FDR and knew he wanted to make constitutional amendments, I'd like to hear about it. Or if anyone has any secret documentation that shows FDR proposed constitutional amendments, I would like to see those.

But in the interest of historical accuracy, my sources say FDR never had the intentions being projected on him by those in my discussion. What say you?

FDR did not set out to amend the text of the Constitution through the process set out in Article V.

Reviving FDR's Vision of What Guarantees Americans Deserve:
A Review of Cass Sunstein's The Second Bill of Rights
By MATT HERRINGTON

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20040924_herrington.html

Roosevelt did not argue that the Constitution should be amended to include the "Second Bill of Rights." But he did believe that social and economic rights ought to be seen as a defining part of our political culture...

Cass R. Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and the author of more than a dozen books, including After the Rights Revolution, Designing Democracy and most recently, The Cost-Benefit State.

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/sunstein-economicsecurity.html

The Second Bill of Rights was a proposal made by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on January 11, 1944 to suggest that the nation had come to recognize, and should now implement, a second bill of rights. Roosevelt did not argue for any change to the United States Constitution; he argued that the second bill of rights was to be implemented politically, not by federal judges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights


Discussions abound in papers in the FDR Library about whether or when to propose a constitutional amendment to support New Deal legislation. A letter of May 29, 1935, from Felix Frankfurter to FDR proposed to "Let the Court strike down any or all of them next winter or spring <1936> especially by a divided court. Then propose a constitutional amendment giving the national Government adequate power to cope with national economic and industrial problems." Roosevelt himself was persuaded that the amendment process was too slow and difficult. In his letter to Frankfurter of February 9, 1937 (written four days after the submission of his "court-packing" plan), FDR counted the chances of achieving a two-thirds vote in this session" as no better than "fifty-fifty." He also saw the ratification process possibly extending into the 1940 national election. So he chose not to seek a constitutional amendment...

EXPLICIT AND AUTHENTIC ACTS: AMENDING THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, 1776-1995 by David E. Kyvig. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996. 604 pp. Cloth $55.00. Reviewed by Donald W. Jackson, Department of Political Science, Texas Christian University.

http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/kyvig.htm