58th Annual Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Lecture Delivered by Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson on October 22, 2025

JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AND JUDICIAL LEGITIMACY:
LESSONS FROM PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND
CHIEF JUSTICE HUGHES
58th Annual Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Lecture
October 22, 2025
Hughes Hubbard & Reed

Hon. Rowan D. Wilson
Chief Judge of New York State
and the New York State Court of Appeals

In 1937, Franklin Delano Roosevelt began his
second term as President, armed with what remains
the greatest electoral landslide in U.S. history, and
attempting to launch a bevy of New Deal programs
to combat the greatest economic and social crisis our
nation has ever faced. Charles Evans Hughes was
then Chief Justice of the United States Supreme
Court, which had stymied the New Deal in case after
case. At the height of his political power, President
Roosevelt proposed legislation that would have
allowed him to appoint up to six additional
Justices. President Roosevelt’s motivation was
clear—he wanted to shift the ideological balance of
the Court so that he could legislate the nation out of
the Great Depression. His plan threw the nation into
a constitutional crisis. What can we learn from
Charles Evans Hughes’s role in resisting President
Roosevelt’s court packing plan, and what can that
historical episode teach us today and in the future
about judicial independence and judicial legitimacy?

Full Lecture Available HERE