FDR proposed ‘court-packing’ plan

On February 5, 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, frustrated with the US Supreme Court’s treatment of some of his economic reforms, proposed a plan to add judges to that and other federal courts whenever a sitting judge reached the age of seventy but declined to retire.

Critics accused Roosevelt of indulging in autocracy and “court-packing.” Review the text of Roosevelt’s “fireside chat” on the proposal from March 9, 1937. Roosevelt eventually dropped the initiative but was nonetheless able to fill seven vacancies on the Court over the next four years, achieving his goal indirectly.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Mao Zedong widow sentenced to death in China

On January 25, 1981, Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, was sentenced to death by a special court in China. The charges stemmed primarily from Jiang's role in the Cultural Revolution. Saying "I was Chairman Mao's dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite," Qing unsuccessfully argued that she was merely acting at the direction of her late husband, who had died five years earlier. In 1983, Jiang's sentence was commuted to life in prison so that she would have "time to repent." Her official trial documents have still not been released.

Charles Manson and "family" convicted of Tate murders

On January 25, 1971, Charles Manson and three women of his "family" were convicted of murder and conspiracy for the 1969 slayings of seven people, including actress Sharon Tate. Learn more about the trial of Charles Manson from Professor Douglas Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.