History Professor Publishes a New Book on a Landmark Supreme Court Case

Professor Williamjames Hull Hoffer of the History Department has published a new book on a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that gutted a key piece of FDR’s New Deal.

The Sick Chicken Case The US Supreme Court and the New Deal has just come out with University of Kansas Press (2025).

On May 25, 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that dealt mortal blows to New Deal legislation and presidential initiatives—a day known to New Dealers as Black Monday. The most significant of these decisions was A.L.A. Schechter Poultry v. U.S., which members of the press promptly labeled the “sick chicken case.” In this decision, the Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional, thus abolishing the National Recovery Administration and the hundreds of codes it had enacted. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced the Court’s action, which started him down the road to his ill-fated plan to pack the Court in 1937.

As Williamjames Hull Hoffer shows, however, the sick chicken case is about much more than a single piece of New Deal legislation. It is a window into American society during the Great Depression and the New Deal—a 1930s America before World War II and the Cold War, the age of radio and movie palaces, and a time of experimentation with government that some likened to fascism or communism, or maybe both. More than a landmark law case that threatened the New Deal, but ultimately did not, Schechter Poultry is not just about a sick chicken; it is about a sick nation trying to heal itself.

Praise for Professor Hoffer's new book:

“Hoffer offers a skillful and insightful account of not only the Schechter litigation itself, but also of the political, economic, regulatory and jurisprudential context from which it emerged, as well as its aftermath and legacy. His analysis is refreshingly impartial and levelheaded. Even those who may differ on some points of interpretation will profit from engagement with this lucid and informative study.”—Barry Cushman, author of Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution.

“Williamjames Hull Hoffer has brought to life an important Supreme Court opinion that provides not only a history of the Court during the New Deal but a potential window to the future as the so-called administrative state has come under risk in the federal courts. A fundamental question in both A.L.A Schechter Poultry and the present is how far the federal government can go in protecting the national health and the economy through expert staffed federal agencies. Hoffer’s exceptional historical presentation is both timely and worthwhile to historians, political scientists and that part of the public interested in nation’s governance.”—Joshua E. Kastenberg, author of Goldwater v. Carter: Foreign Policy, China, and the Resurgence of Executive Branch Primacy.

“Williamjames Hull Hoffer has taken the Sick Chicken Case, one only a constitutional law enthusiast could love, and used it to great effect, giving the reader both a detailed and telescopic study of the constitutional and political battles of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. It is a well-rendered study of the origins of New Deal legislation and litigation, politics and law that reverberate nearly a century later.”—Michael S. Ariens, author of The Lawyer’s Conscience: A History of American Lawyer Ethics.

“Hoffer skillfully places the Schechter Poultry case in its historical and political context, and together with excellent legal analysis has produced a compelling and vibrant treatment of this landmark case. This excellent volume will be useful to anyone interested in the case, the nondelegation doctrine, the New Deal, the [in]famous Court packing plan and the legal and historical development of federal power to regulate the national economy.”—Jack M. Beerman, author of The Journey to Separate but Equal: Madame Decuir’s Quest for Racial Justice in the Reconstruction Era.

“This lively book provides fresh insights into the facts of Schechter, and it places the law of the case into a richly textured political, economic and cultural context. In doing so, Hoffer provides a prism through which to examine the rise of the administrative state and the constitutional history of the past century and a half.”—William Ross, author of World War I and the American Constitution. 

Categories: Education, Law