The Sick Chicken Case

The Sick Chicken Case

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 "Sick Chicken" Case

"The Sick Chicken Case investigates the US Supreme Court decisions that dealt mortal blows to two pieces of legislation and one presidential action of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the liberal Democrats' New Deal. In A.L.A Schechter Poultry v. U.S., the court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional. This was a part of a broader attempt to deal with the under-consumption that supposedly caused the Great Depression. The Second New Deal arrived on the court's docket shortly afterwards. The Sick Chicken Case is also about the Great Depression and the New Deal-a look at 1930s America before World War II and the Cold War"--

To Rehabilitate and Stabilize Labor Conditions in the Textile Industry of the United States