This is backstory. I'm Ed Ayers. On Thursday, a short-handed Supreme Court deadlocked on President Obama's immigration plan.

The president had sharp words for centric publicans who were refusing to consider his Supreme Court nominee.

They are allowing partisan politics to jeopardize something as fundamental as the impartiality and integrity of our justice system.

This is hardly the first time the high court has been embroiled in partisanship. Consider 1937, when Franklin Roosevelt tried to add six extra justices.

There was total political chaos. Nothing else happened in Washington except that they argued about this court packing plan.

Today on backstory, we're exploring the history of partisan politics and the Supreme Court.

From impeaching a justice in the early republic to blocking C-SPAN, the Supreme Court has always struggled to stay above the fray.

Politics and the Supreme Court. Today on backstory.

Major funding for backstory is provided by the Shia Khan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation.

From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. This is backstory with the American History Guys.

Welcome to the show. I'm Ed Ayers, you're with Peter O'Roneoff.

Peter O'Roneoff, either Ed and Brian Ballot.

Hi Ed, we're going to start off today with this breaking news from NBC on June 26, 1987.

Good evening. Justice Lewis Powell, a courtly southerner, surprised almost everyone today by announcing his retirement from the US Supreme Court.

Now, any Supreme Court vacancy grabs headlines, but Powell's announcement was particularly significant because of the role he played on an ideologically divided court.

Whether voting conservative as President Nixon hoped when he appointed him or liberal, Powell has been the so-called swing vote.

President Reagan's pick to fill Justice Powell's seat was conservative judge Robert Bork.

This enraged some Senate Democrats who feared Bork would move the court and the law of the land decisively to the right.

Robert Bork's America is a land of which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters.

This is Senator Edward Kennedy speaking out against Bork's nomination less than an hour after it was announced.

And school children could not be taught about evolution.

And what it did was it froze things. That's NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.

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