Before a gathering of the White House Press corps on March 21, 1930, President Herbert Hoover announced his nomination for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill a vacancy unexpectedly created by the death of Edward T. Sanford. His nominee was forty-four year old native North Carolinian John J. Parker, a member since 1925 of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Within days of the nomination organized labor and its allies in Congress and the press unleashed withering attacks on a single judicial opinion authored by Parker. In the process, the priority of issues raised in that case was dramatically inverted. The foremost issue, federal jurisdiction, became subordinated to the scope of an injunctive decree, an issue of secondary importance. Thus, the nominee's three year old opinion in International Union, United Mine Workers of America v. Red Jacket Consolidated Coal and Coke Company became the catalyst for transforming him from relative obscurity into a symbol of anti-labor conservatism.

Judicial reform is not achieved rapidly or easily. But neither is reform realized with alacrity elsewhere in the American system of government given the procedural, organizational, and structural stability typical of political institutions. The forces of change in the federal judiciary, however, confront special problems.

In that branch, the obstacles to reform are formidable indeed. Foremost among them is the principle of an independent judiciary which operates to insulate courts and judges from accountability to the electorate or to the legislative and executive branches of government. At the same time, widespread deference to the value of an independent court system encourages an image of the judiciary as the nonpolitical branch, and that image is reinforced by the autonomy of the judiciary, an autonomy unparalleled among other governmental agencies. Under such circumstances, the judicial environment inhibits reform because the existing situation is so attractive.