What is "four horsemen"

The "Four Horsemen" was the nickname given by the press to four conservative members of the United States Supreme Court during the 1932–1937 terms, who opposed the New Deal agenda of President Franklin Roosevelt. They were Justices Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter. They were opposed by the liberal " Three Musketeers"— Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and Harlan Stone. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Justice Owen J. Roberts controlled the balance. Hughes was more inclined to join the liberals, but Roberts was often swayed to the side of the conservatives.

Though at first the Court had accepted some of the New Deal legislation over the objections of the four conservative justices, in the 1935 term, the Four Horsemen, together with Roberts and Hughes, voided the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 ( United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936)), along with the Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act, the Railroad Act, and the Coal Mining Act. In Carter v. Carter Coal Company, 298 U.S. 238 (1936), the Four together with Roberts voided legislation regulating the coal industry; the same line-up voided a New York minimum wage law for women and children in Morehead v. New York, 298 U.S. 587 (1936). The Court had also struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States 295 U.S. 495 (1935) the previous May. Though the latter decision was unanimous, Cardozo did not join the opinion for the Court (written by Chief Justice Hughes, and joined by Brandeis, Roberts, and the Four Horsemen), and wrote a separate concurrence, joined by Stone, to state the view of why the delegated power of legislation in the code at issue was "not canalized within banks that keep it from overflowing."

The Four Horsemen would ride in a car to and from the Court together to coordinate positions and arguments. They were bitterly opposed to the New Deal policies for unemployment and economic recovery, and they invalidated state laws regulating labor and business relations. The Four's votes kept Congress and the states from regulating the economy. These actions led many observers to the conclusion that the Court was likely to be obstructive to all legislative efforts to cope with the depression, and to remain wedded to the precedents of the Lochner era. Some academics argued that the Court's aversion to 'regulated capitalism' confronted the country with "the question not how governmental functions shall be shared, but whether in substance we shall govern at all."

The result of these dynamics was a steady drift of the Court towards a crisis; the 1935 term was labeled by Justice Stone "one of the most disastrous in [the Court's] history." New Dealers decried the Court's actions as "economic dictatorship", and some communities even hanged the justices in effigy.

It was the success of the Horsemen in striking down New Deal legislation that led to Roosevelt's court-packing scheme, a controversial proposal in February 1937 to appoint more Justices in order to change the composition of the Court. This was rendered unnecessary when Justice Roberts, who had supported the Four Horsemen on several decisions during the 1935-36 term, sided with the Three Musketeers in a landmark minimum wage case in March 1937 (known as " The switch in time that saved nine"). This, together with the retirement of Van Devanter in June 1937 and his replacement by Hugo Black ended the Four Horsemen's domination of the Court. Black and Roosevelt considered the Four the " direct descendants of Darwin and Spencer."

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are the forces of man's destruction as described in the Christian Bible in chapter six of the Book of Revelation.

The Four Horsemen or Four Horsemen may also refer to:

The Four Horsemen are a fictional group from Highlander: The Series based on the Biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

They were four Immortals that murdered and looted across two continents in the Bronze Age.

The horsemen consisted of:

• Kronos (Pestilence)
• Methos ( Death)
• Silas (War)
• Caspian (Famine)

The Four Horsemen is a cocktail containing four hard liquors and named after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The name of the drink is derived from the fact that the most common brand names of each ingredient are also male given names and the drinks have a high alcohol content (and therefore tend to have a very strong effect on human physiology). Additionally, the four brand names usually all begin with the letter "J" (see sidebar), giving further unity to the concept of the "Four Horsemen".

The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame comprised a winning group of American football players at the University of Notre Dame under coach Knute Rockne. They were the backfield of Notre Dame's 1924 football team. The players that made up this group were Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden.

In 1924, a nickname coined by sportswriter Grantland Rice and the actions of a student publicity aide transformed the Notre Dame backfield of Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller, and Layden into the most fabled quartet in college football history, the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.

Quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, left halfback Jim Crowley, right halfback Don Miller, and fullback Elmer Layden had run rampant through Irish opponents' defenses since coach Knute Rockne devised the lineup in 1922 during their sophomore season. During the three-year tenure of the Four Horsemen, Notre Dame lost only two games; one each in 1922 and 1923, both to Nebraska in Lincoln before packed houses.

Four Horsemen is a 2012 British documentary film directed by Ross Ashcroft. The film criticises the system of fractional reserve banking, debt-based economy and political lobbying by banks, which it regards as a serious threat to Western civilisation. It criticises the War on Terror, which it maintains is not fought to eliminate al-Qaeda and other militant organizations, but to create larger debt to the banks. As an alternative, the film promotes a return to classical economics and the gold standard. Among those interviewed are Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank; Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor; John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; Herman Daly, economy professor and former economist at the World Bank; and Max Keiser, TV host and former trader. The film was released in the United Kingdom on 14 March 2012. A book based on the film has been published.