The switch in time that saved nine

In U.S. Supreme Court history, "The switch in time that saved nine" is the phrase—originally a quip by humorist Cal Tinney[1]—about what was perceived in 1937 as the sudden jurisprudential shift by Associate Justice Owen Roberts in the 1937 case West Coast Hotel Co. v.

[2] Conventional historical accounts portrayed the Court's majority opinion as a strategic political move to protect the Court's integrity and independence from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's court-reform bill, also known as the "court-packing plan", but later historical evidence gives weight to Roberts' decision being made immediately after oral arguments, much earlier than the bill's introduction.

Conventional history has painted Roberts's vote as a strategic, politically motivated shift to "save nine", meaning it defused Roosevelt's drive to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court beyond nine.

[8] The ruling marked the end of the Lochner era, a forty-year period in which the Supreme Court often struck down legislation that regulated business activity.

[9] Popular as well as some scholarly understanding of the Hughes Court has typically cast it as divided between a conservative and liberal faction, with two critical swing votes.

[10] While it is true that many rulings of the 1930s Supreme Court were deeply divided, with four justices on each side and Justice Roberts as the typical swing vote, the ideological divide this represented was linked to a larger debate in U.S. jurisprudence regarding the role of the judiciary, the meaning of the U.S. Constitution, and the respective rights and prerogatives of the different branches of government in shaping the judicial outlook of the Court.

[15][16] Having no "case or controversy" legs upon which to stand, Roberts and the rest of the majority deferred to the Adkins precedent, voting to strike the New York statute.

[19] The "switch", together with the retirement of Justice Van Devanter at the end of the 1937 spring term, is often viewed as having contributed to the demise of Roosevelt's court reform bill.