George Sutherland, a senator from Utah and an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from his appointment by Harding in 1922 to his retirement in 1938, has, despite his recognized legal scholarship, his early espousal of women’s rights, and his ringingly liberal opinion in the Scottsboro case, been largely associated in the minds of law professors and historians with three of his colleagues on the high bench: Willis Van Devanter, Pierce Butler, and James C. McReynolds. Sutherland and this trio, with the occasional assistance of Owen Roberts, constituted the majority on the court who struck down much of the early social legislation of the New Deal. The “four horsemen,” as they were derisively labeled by contemporary liberal papers, were depicted as standing like so many Horatii at the bridge of progress, barring all efforts to lift the nation out of its dark depression and forcing the president to the desperate remedy of his court-packing bill. What Roosevelt failed to accomplish in this too peremptory fashion—his bill would have added up to six new seats to the court—he succeeded in effecting by later appointments, and the Constitution was duly stretched and fitted to the needs of his brain trust.

The “horsemen” were never credited by the liberal press with any motive but a curmudgeonly desire to preserve at all costs the property rights of big business and the economic system known as laissez faire. As G.