New book highlights ties between US presidents and justices

WASHINGTON: Mired in the Korean War, President Harry Truman began plotting a federal government takeover of American steel companies to head off a strike.

Before he followed through with his plan, he secretly asked Chief Justice Fred Vinson, his close friend and poker buddy, how the Supreme Court might react.

Vinson told his friend not to worry and Truman proceeded with the takeover. A few months later, the Supreme Court found his actions unconstitutional.

The account is one of several instances of presidents and justices seeming to blur the constitutional separation of powers that appear in a new history of American presidents at war.

That relationship between the White House and Supreme Court is being examined anew after the bitter confirmation fight over Brett Kavanaugh, who angrily denounced President Donald Trump’s political opponents during a Senate hearing.

Kavanaugh, who previously served in President George W. Bush’s White House, took the concerns about his appearance of partisanship so seriously that he wrote a Wall Street Journal oped on the eve of his confirmation to assert his belief that “an independent and impartial judiciary is essential to our constitutional republic”.

He blamed some of his partisan rhetoric on the intensity of his confirmation process, which was nearly derailed by sexual assault claims.

He was advised closely on his handling of the misconduct allegations by Trump advisers, including White House counsel Don McGahn.

Historian Michael Beschloss, author of Presidents at War, said Kavanaugh “has been bound pretty closely to the Trump administration over the past few weeks”.

And he said history provides examples of “why you worry about a justice who is not independent enough of the president”.

Beschloss writes about the relationship between President Lyndon B. Johnson and his close friend Abe Fortas, whom he nominated to the high court in 1965.

After Fortas was confirmed, he “wound up quietly helping the president write speeches and choose Vietnam bombing targets”.

The close ties between Johnson and Fortas helped scuttle the latter’s nomination to be chief justice after they were revealed to the Senate.

Presidents have also more overtly called on Supreme Court justices to help them in times of political peril.

After the World War II bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt feared he would be blamed as he moved the US Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Hawaii.

Seeking to get ahead of a congressional investigation, Roosevelt tapped Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts to oversee a supposedly independent commission.

“Roberts was known to be unassertive, which made him subject to Roosevelt’s importuning,” Beschloss writes.

His book, which is out this week, examines how eight wartime presidents dealt with their powers under the Constitution.