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Another guffaw followed this sentence, which the President read with ripe irony. He paused, grinned, then resumed: "In the Federal courts there are in all 237 life tenure permanent judgeships. Twenty-five of them are now held by judges over 70 years of age and eligible to leave the bench on full pay. Originally no pension or retirement allowance was provided by the Congress. ... In exceptional cases, of course, judges, like other men, retain to an advanced age full mental and physical vigor. Those not so fortunate are often unable to perceive their own infirmities. 'They seem to be tenacious of the appearance of adequacy.' "
Franklin Roosevelt paused again to tell his audience that this sentence was a quotation from an eminent Justice. Who? He archly declined to say.*
"To meet the situation, in 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1916, the Attorney Generals then in office recommended to the Congress that when a district judge or a circuit judge failed to retire at the age of 70, an additional judge be appointed in order that the affairs of the court might be promptly and adequately discharged."
He would put the press out of its suspense, said the President, pausing once more. The Attorney Generals who made that recommendation were named Thomas W. Gregory and James Clark McReynolds, now 75 and a member of the Court. Loudest laugh of all shook the executive office and the President heartily joined.
"Modern complexities call also for a constant infusion of new blood in the courts, just as it is needed in executive functions of the Government and in private business. A lowered mental or physical vigor leads men to avoid an examination of complicated and changed conditions. Little by little, new facts become blurred through old glasses fitted, as it were, for the needs of another generation; older men, assuming that the scene is the same as it was in the past, cease to explore or inquire into the present or the future. . . ."
Modest proposals. On the basis of these old and eminently reasonable arguments, the President made his proposals: Let the Chief Justice have power to assign temporarily lower court justices from one court to another when dockets grow crowded. Let the Supreme Court have a new officer, a $10,000-a-year "proctor" to watch for congestion in the lower courts and recommend transfers of judges and other steps to relieve it. Let any decision on the constitutionality of a law be appealed directly to the Supreme Court, there to take precedence over other cases so that the constitutionality of laws be not long in doubt.