1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
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The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, also known as the “court-packing plan,” was a legislative initiative proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. The amount of eight associate justices and one chief justice was established with the Judiciary Act of 1869. FDR desired favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that the court had ruled unconstitutional, and the bill would have granted the president power to appoint an additional justice to the Court — up to a maximum of six — for every member of the court over the age of 70 years and 6 months. During Roosevelt’s first term the Supreme Court struck down several New Deal measures as being unconstitutional. Roosevelt sought to reverse this by changing the makeup of the court through the appointment of new additional justices who he hoped would rule his legislative initiatives did not exceed the constitutional authority of the government. After the Senate Majority Leader Joseph Robinson died suddenly, the vice president told FDR he would not secure the necessary votes to push the bill through. Nearly a week later, the Senate voted 70–20 to send the judicial-reform measure back to committee, where the controversial language was stripped by explicit instruction from the Senate floor. By July 29, 1937, the Senate Judiciary Committee produced a revised Judicial Procedures Reform Act that revised the lower courts but did not provide more federal judges or justices.
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