The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, frequently called the "court-packing plan", was a failed legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to th
lossy page 1 Roosevelt Fireside Chat 1937.tif
The Hughes Court, 1932–1937. Front row: Justices Brandeis and Van Devanter, Chief Justice Hughes, and Justices McReynolds and Sutherland. Back row: Justices Roberts, Butler, Stone, and Cardozo.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His dissatisfaction over Supreme Court decisions holding New Deal programs unconstitutional prompted him to seek methods to change the way the court functioned.
Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Holmes's loss of half his pension pay due to New Deal legislation after his 1932 retirement is believed to have dissuaded Justices Van Devanter and Sutherland from departing the bench.
In U.S. Supreme Court history, "The switch in time that saved nine" is the phrase—originally a quip by humorist Cal Tinney—about what was perceived in 1937 as the sudden jurisprudential shift by Assoc
Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937
…Court's judicial independence by alleviating the political pressure to create a court more friendly to the New Deal. This reversal came to be known as "the switch in time that saved nine"; however, recent legal-historical scholarship has called that narrative into question as Roberts' decision and vote in the Parrish case predated both…
Conventional history has characterized Owen Roberts' vote in 1937's case West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish as a strategic measure to save the judicial integrity and independence of the U.S. Supreme Court.