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 that he believed the people would ultimately obtain the power to interpret even the federal Constitution.”

Roosevelt’s recall initiative became a dominant issue during the 1912 presidential election, a four-way contest that pitted Roosevelt, running as a Progressive, against Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist Eugene V. Debs. Ultimately, Roosevelt’s attacks on the judiciary failed to win him the Republican nomination, repelling party conservatives and energizing Taft’s reelection campaign, which focused on protecting judicial independence. President Wilson, who prevailed in the contest, did not support recall of court decisions, and the frontal attack on the judiciary faded after Roosevelt’s defeat.

During and after Roosevelt’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1912, a group of U.S. Senators continued to press the progressive critique of the Court. Led by Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, William Borah of Idaho, George Norris of Nebraska, and Robert Owen of Oklahoma, these western and midwestern lawmakers argued that the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court, stood in the way of reforms that the Senators viewed as necessary remedies for social and economic ills caused by industrialization. Arguing that the courts were unduly solicitous of corporate interests and thus hostile to workplace regulation and the labor movement, progressives sought tools to limit judicial power. In the name of popular accountability, they proposed a number of mechanisms to constrain the judiciary, including recalls, supermajority voting requirements, and legislative overrides.

In 1912, Senator Owen proposed that Congress be empowered to recall and remove federal judges from office by a majority vote of both houses. In 1918, he sought to write into a piece of legislation a provision shielding it from judicial review—as in a renewed federal ban on child labor, after the Court had invalidated a similar ban. Inveighing against “judicial usurpations” a few years later, Senator La Follette argued for a constitutional amendment that would permit Congress to override the Court by passing again laws that the Court had invalidated. Senator Borah, for his part, objected to decisions in which the Court decided by a 5–4 or 6–3 vote to strike down a statute. He therefore sponsored a bill in 1923 that would have required the assent of at least seven Justices to hold a statute unconstitutional. Though none of these proposals ultimately succeeded, their numerosity and the seriousness with which they were debated, both within Congress and among the broader public, demonstrates the force and appeal of the progressive critiques.