Helvering v. Davis 1937
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 1114-1119 |
Page 1114
Petitioner: Guy T. Helvering,
U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
Respondent: George P. Davis
Petitioner's Claim: That the Social Security Act of 1935 authorizing payroll taxes to fund a national old-age benefits program neither violates the Tax and Spending Clause of the Constitution nor takes away from powers reserved to the states in the Tenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: Homer S. Cummings, U.S. Attorney General
Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Edward F. McClennan
Justices for the Court: Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin N. Cardozo, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, Owen Josephus Roberts, Harlan Fiske Stone, George Sutherland, Willis Van Devanter
Justices Dissenting: Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds
Date of Decision: May 24, 1937
Decision: Ruled in favor of Helvering and the United States by finding that Congress has constitutional powers to establish a Social Security program for the aged.
Significance: In upholding the constitutionality of the Social Security Act, the Supreme Court signaled a major shift by supporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. The act introduced a new era in American history by establishing a responsibility of society to care for the aged, unemployed, impoverished, and disabled.
Page 1115
"By 1932, the unemployed numbered upward of thirteen million. Many lived in the primitive conditions of a preindustrial society stricken by famine. In the coal fields of West Virginia and Kentucky, evicted families shivered in tents in midwinter; children went barefoot. In Los Angeles, people whose gas and electricity had been turned off were reduced to cooking over wood fires in back lots . . . At least a million, perhaps as many as two million were wandering the country in a fruitless quest for work or adventure or just a sense of movement." From Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal:1932-1940 (1963) by William E. Leuchtenburg, New York: HarperCollins.
The Great Depression, beginning with the U.S. stock market crash in October of 1929, was a worldwide business slump leading to the highest unemployment in modern times. With stores, banks, and factories shut down, millions of Americans became jobless and broke. The substantial economic hardships on American citizens through the following years extended to those too old to work.
In 1932 with the economy continuing to suffer, the nation elected Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) president. To address the nation's economic plight, Roosevelt soon introduced an ambitious program for social and economic reform that became known as the New Deal. Central to reform was the substantially increased...
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