Reason reports:
Sutherland's most famous vote, however, arguably came without comment in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, the 1935 decision that struck down the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which at that point was the centerpiece of the New Deal. Specifically, NRA price controls and other "codes of fair competition" had made it illegal for the Schechter brothers, who maintained a small Kosher slaughterhouse in New York, to set their own prices and let their customers pick out their own chickens. (Similarly, dry cleaner Jacob Maged would spend three months in jail in 1934 for charging 35 cents to press a suit, rather than the NRA-mandated 40 cents.)An article well worth your time.
"Extraordinary conditions may call for extraordinary remedies," Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes held for the unanimous Court. "But the argument necessarily stops short of an attempt to justify action which lies outside the sphere of constitutional authority. Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional powers." The NRA was finished.
