In the final scene of Power, the Supreme Court justices appear as a striking abstraction: Nine scowling masks line up in a row on top of a giant podium. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes speaks the majority opinion: 'Water power, the right to convert it into electric energy, and the electric energy thus produced constitute property belonging to the United States.

~ Susan Quinn

Susan Quinn Electricity Ownership Power Property Water

Roosevelt spoke eloquently, in his penetrating tenor, of those 'who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life . . . I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,' he told the audience, '. . . The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

~ Susan Quinn

Susan Quinn Depression Government Inauguration Progress Roosevelt Wpa

When the Chief Justice read me the oath,' he [FDR] later told an adviser, 'and came to the words support the Constitution of the United States I felt like saying: Yes, but it's the Constitution as I understand it, flexible enough to meet any new problem of democracy--not the kind of Constitution your Court has raised up as a barrier to progress and democracy.

~ Susan Quinn

Susan Quinn Constitution Democracy Flexibility Roosevelt Supreme Court