President Barack Obama's struggles with a conservative Supreme Court are an old American story. In "FDR and Chief Justice Hughes," author James F. Simon recounts Franklin D. Roosevelt's struggles in the 1930s to protect his New Deal legislation from a conservative Supreme Court led by Charles Evans Hughes.

For example, in 1935, the court threw out the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which sought to regulate industry and promote unions as a way of getting the economy moving again.

Two years later, a frustrated Roosevelt called for expanding the nine-justice court — packing the court, his critics said. With that, the clash took two unexpected turns.

First, Roosevelt's liberal allies in Congress balked at tampering with the august institution. Second, the court softened its resistance to Roosevelt's New Deal legislation. In the end, the court's roster remained at nine justices.

Simon teaches law in New York and has written seven other books on American history, law and politics. In "FDR and Chief Justice Hughes," he eats up about half of the book with biographies of Roosevelt and Hughes before the New Deal era. True, the biographical details include the formation of the legal and political philosophies of the two men. But the details also stray into trivial matters that bear little relevance to the later court-packing flap. And Roosevelt's biography is an oft-told tale.

Still, to most Americans, Hughes is ancient and obscure history. But he was a key figure in American history: a governor of New York, an associate justice on the Supreme Court, a losing presidential candidate in 1916, a secretary of state and then a return to the Supreme Court as chief justice. Simon portrays Hughes as a decent man of integrity and honor and a champion of civil liberties.

If nothing else, putting Hughes back in the spotlight of history makes "FDR and Chief Justice Hughes" worth reading.

Harry Levins of Manchester retired in 2007 as senior writer of the Post-Dispatch.

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'FDR and Chief Justice Hughes'

By James F. Simon

Published by Simon & Schuster, 461 pages, $28

On sale Tuesday