Revista da EMERJ - V. 20 - N. 2 - Maio/Agosto - 2018

39  R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 20, n. 2, p. 8 - 53, Maio/Agosto 2018  the camel’s back during the New Deal constitutional crisis. 151 While President Roosevelt and other Democrats had criticized earlier rulin- gs striking down New Deal measures such as the National Industrial Recovery Act 152 and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, 153 those statu- tes were sufficiently unpopular that the Court decisions invalidating them commanded something close to majority support in the na- tion. 154 By 1936, however, both Democrats and Republicans endor- sed state minimum wage legislation, and thus Tipaldo incited a fires- torm of criticism. That ruling was the proximate cause of Roosevelt’s Court-packing plan–a scheme that certainly would have damaged the Court’s stature had it been enacted. Thus, constitutional rulings that contravene overwhelming public opinion–at least on salient is- sues–do jeopardize the Court’s standing. No doubt cognizant of this reality, the Justices rarely have tempted fate by frustrating the wishes of dominant majorities. Whether other rulings harm the Court’s reputation is partly a product of the intensity of preference manifested by opponents of the Court’s decisions. Thus, for example, Brown v. Board of Educa- tion generated furious resistance among southern whites–opposition that succeeded at blocking implementation of the Court’s edict for an entire decade. 155 The Court’s standing among southern whites was severely impaired as a result of Brown and other Warren Court rulings. 156 (The Court’s standing recovered as national–including sou- thern–opinion changed dramatically on the race issue as a result of the 1960s’ civil rights movement. 157 ) Similarly, Dred Scott v. Sandford , 151 See William Leuchtenburg, The Origins of FDR’s Court-Packing Plan, 1966 S. Ct. Rev. 347, 376-77 152 A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). 153 Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238 (1936). 154 See Barry Cushman, Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution 34-35 (1998); Leuchtenburg, supra note __, at 368. 155 See generally Numan Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s (1969); Neil R. McMillen, The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction, 1954-64 (1971); Benjamin Muse, Ten Years of Prelude: The Story of Integration Since the Supreme Court’s 1954 Decision (1964). 156 See, e.g., C. Herman Pritchett, Congress Versus the Supreme Court 1957-1960, at 18 (1961) (noting attacks on the Court by southerners that “were vituperative in the extreme, calling into question not only the ability but also the motives and the patriotism of the justices”); Walter F. Murphy, Congress and the Court: A Case Study in the American Political Process 264-65 (1962) (noting polls revealing a rise in the Supreme Court’s unfavorable ratings among white southerners after Brown ). Brady, supra note __, conveys a vivid sense of how whites in the deep South felt about the Supreme Court as a result of Brown . 157 See, e.g., Matthew David Lassiter, The Rise of the Suburban South: The “Silent Majority” and the Politics of Edu- cation, 1945-75 (Ph.D., University of Virginia 1999), Part IV: The Suburbanization of Southern Politics: The Silent Majority and the Fate of the Sunbelt, 34 (noting a Gallup Poll released in May 1970 which revealed that only 16 percent