Hughes Court

The Hughes Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States from 1930 to 1941, when Charles Evans Hughes served as Chief Justice of the United States. Hughes succeeded William Howard Taft as Chief Justice after Taft's retirement, and Hughes served as Chief Justice until his own retirement, at which time Harlan Stone was nominated and confirmed as Hughes's replacement. During Hughes's term as Chief Justice, the Supreme Court moved from its former quarters at the United States Capitol to the newly constructed Supreme Court Building.

Presiding over the Judiciary during the Great Depression and the New Deal meant to overcome it, the Court was dominated through the 1937 term by four conservative justices, known as the "Four Horsemen" (Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter), and struck down many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. Roosevelt's frustration with the Court led to his so-called court-packing scheme, a 1937 proposal—defeated in Congress—to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court in order to affect its ideological position.