Free Republic

Immediately after his coronation, King Franklin Roosevelt established The National Recovery Administration (NRA) and vested it with dictatorial powers. King Franklin had seized upon the fear and anxiety the average American felt in the Great Depression and he thought people would roll over and become his surfs to save them. The Schechter brothers, four Orthodox Jewish immigrants working as kosher butchers in Brooklyn, had other ideas. They fought King Franklin all the way to the United States Supreme Court and their winning decision came down 76 years ago today. The brothers with the thick Eastern European accents and odd looking...

In the 1930s, the Schechter brothers ran a chicken business in Brooklyn. The name Schechter is derived from the Yiddish word for "butcher," and this is what the brothers did: they slaughtered chickens and sold them to shops. The brothers seemed to be typical immigrants, at once struggling and succeeding. But in 1934, they became famous thanks to Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States. Only months after Franklin Roosevelt had signed a code regulating the chicken business, the brothers were accused of violating it. Prosecutors said they had sold an unfit chicken, one with an egg lodged inside it, and...