New Release: Enayat, "Law, State, and Society in Modern Iran"

Palgrave Macmillan has released Law, State, and Society in Modern Iran: Constitutionalism, Autocracy, and Legal Reform, 1906-1941, by Hadi Enayat. The publisher describes the book as follows:

Incorporating history, sociology, and rule of law studies, this book sheds light on an understudied but fascinating dimension of modernization in Iran, namely the emergence of a new legal system between the 1906 Constitutional Revolution and the end of Reza Shah's rule in 1941. While Iranian constitutionalism can be seen as part of a global trend of constitutional revolutions at the turn of the twentieth century, in Iran, an unusual institutional and historical background shaped a path to legal reform that was in many ways unique. Among other factors, the scholastic legalism of the Shi'i ulama and the considerable autonomy they enjoyed in administering the civil law in the nineteenth century made legal reform a particularly contested, difficult, and politically charged aspect of state building.

A few blurbs:

"Law, State, and Society in Modern Iran offers a perceptive examination of the impact of legal reforms on the process of state building and modernization in the first half of twentieth century in Iran. Its use of a wide range of primary source material will be particularly welcomed by historians of the period, and its broad analytical approach should make it indispensable for comparative studies of legal reforms in the wider context of the Middle East and current debates on constitutional development." -- Ali Gheissari

"Legal transformations of codes, institutions, and procedures constituted a crucial motor in the formation of political modernity and the modern state in Iran. This book contains lucid and original accounts and analyses of the events and processes in these transformations, rich in the details of political struggles and ideological contests, not only between the entrenched clerical hierarchy and the modernizing constitutionalists but also within and across both camps. This is key to understanding the subsequent fractured evolution of Iranian state, society, and revolution." -- Sami Zubaida

Cushman on "Court-Packing and Compromise"

Senate Judiciary Committee Considers the Court-Packing Bill (Credit: LC)

Barry Cushman, Notre Dame Law School, has posted Court-Packing and Compromise, which appears in Constitutional Commentary 26 (2013).  Here is the abstract:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing bill would have permitted him to appoint six additional justices to the Supreme Court, thereby expanding its membership to fifteen immediately. Throughout the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to enact the measure, Roosevelt was presented with numerous opportunities to compromise for a measure authorizing the appointment of fewer additional justices. The President rejected each of these proposals, and his refusal to compromise often has been attributed to stubbornness, overconfidence, or hubris. Yet an examination of the papers of Attorney General Homer S. Cummings reveals why FDR and his advisors believed that he required no fewer than six additional appointments in order to secure a liberal working majority on the Court. Those sources also help to clarify why the substitute Court bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Joseph Robinson in July of 1937 took the form that it did, and why Robinson’s untimely death that month not only made passage of the bill impossible, but also made it unnecessary. Though Roosevelt’s refusal to compromise can be seen as more rational than is commonly thought, in retrospect one can see that his Court-packing proposal was an entirely unnecessary misadventure through which the President ultimately lost far more than he gained.

Update
I can't resist the temptation to chime in with something I've just read in the archives.  On November 4, 1936, Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., wrote his mother from the Solicitor General's office: “I do not like the size of the Roosevelt vote.  With a man of the President’s temperament such an endorsement may prove an irresistible temptation."  DRE.

Policy History Plenaries Announced

The Institute for Political History and the Journal of Policy History are drumming up interest in next June’s Conference on Policy History by circulating news of three plenary sessions:

Wednesday June 4:  “Party Balance, Partisan Polarization, and Policy Conflict,” with Michael Holt, Daniel Walker Howe, Richard John, Gareth Davies, Sidney Milkis, Byron Shafer
   
Thursday June 5: “Can Social Activism Change Public Policy? If so, How? If not, Why Not?” with Mark Brilliant, Rhonda Williams, Nancy MacLean, Matthew Garcia
    
Friday, June 6: “New Perspectives on the Presidency and Party Politics,” with Jeffrey Pasley, Mark Summers, Irwin Gellman, Bruce Miroff, Daniel DiSalvo

The conference–the eighth biennial– will take place at the Sheraton Capitol Square Hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio from June 4-7, 2014.  The organizers report:

We are currently accepting panel and paper proposals on all topics regarding American political and policy history, political development, and comparative historical analysis. Complete sessions, including two or three presenters with chair/commentator(s) are strongly encouraged. Individual paper proposals are welcome. Because the conference has grown in size, individual papers might have a more difficult time being placed on the program. In order to accommodate more participants, conference organizers have created a poster session which will allow younger scholars to display their research projects.  Participants may only appear once as a presenter in the program. 

 Proposals for posters, panels and papers must be submitted online here.  Deadline for submission is December 2, 2013.