The Showdown.

Most observers of the court have concluded that the lesson of FDR's gambit is that court packing is a foolish political tactic. Intentionally or otherwise, these decisions in the administration's favor stripped FDR's court-packing eff ort of its urgency and helped tip the scales against court reform. Kalman's conclusion is that the threatened court packing was indispensable in defending the New Deal from a hostile court. The 1938 midterms would probably have gone badly for Roosevelt even if he hadn't pursued the addition of justices to the court - but the legislative coalition that had enacted the New Deal's transformative legislation would very likely not have reappeared. [Extracted from the article]