Hughes Court

Supreme Court of the United States

Hughes Court
Taft Court ← → Stone Court
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
February 24, 1930 – June 30, 1941 (11 years, 126 days)
Seat	Old Senate Chamber (1930–35) Supreme Court Building (1935–41) Washington, D.C.
No. of positions	9
Hughes Court decisions

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 the latter's retirement, and Hughes served as Chief Justice until his retirement, at which point Harlan Stone was nominated and confirmed as Hughes's replacement. The Supreme Court moved from its former quarters at the United States Capitol to the newly constructed Supreme Court Building during Hughes's chief-justiceship.

Presiding over the country 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.^[1] 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.