An Unexpected Revolution: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and American Democracy in the New Deal Era
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A major reassessment of the Supreme Court of the 1930s, arguing that the opinions and strategies of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes—not just FDR’s executive and legislative actions—were essential to the success of the New Deal and the strengthening of American democracy.
Charles Evans Hughes was chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1930 to 1941, during one of the most transformative—and tumultuous—periods in American history. Franklin Roosevelt has long dominated both the headlines and the histories of the era, while Hughes is often dismissed as a retrograde technocrat. Yet much of what FDR accomplished was made possible by Hughes. The chief justice saw his mission as safeguarding American democracy by protecting political rights, upholding laws regulating businesses, and promoting public welfare. Through a close reading of the Court’s record, David Rudenstine reveals a justice whose groundbreaking opinions helped launch the constitutional revolutions of the second half of the twentieth century.
During Hughes’s tenure, political dissidents and Black voters gained constitutional protections, and the press was shielded from prior restraints and other repression. Having blessed segregation decades earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court under Hughes began reversing itself, finally taking a hammer to Jim Crow. Mindful of the Depression’s ravages, the Court also affirmed national and state governments’ powers to regulate the economy and spend on public welfare. Crucially, Hughes rejected what is now called originalism: He strengthened the legitimacy of the Court by insisting that it consider the contemporary effects of laws when interpreting the Constitution.
Provocative and forcefully argued, An Unexpected Revolution resets our understanding of the New Deal era and the central role Hughes and his Court played in restoring the country’s well-being and fortifying its democratic foundations.
ISBN
9780674310094
Publication Date
6-8-2027
Publisher
De Gruyter Brill
Disciplines
Constitutional Law | Law | Public Law and Legal Theory
Recommended Citation
Rudenstine, David, "An Unexpected Revolution: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and American Democracy in the New Deal Era" (2027). Books. 135.
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/faculty-books/135
