A stubborn Supreme Court.
A furious president.
A desperate plan to “pack” the Court.
And one justice, Owen J. Roberts, who suddenly “saw the light” just in time—“the switch in time that saved nine.”

But once you start digging into the docket entries, conference notes, and internal Court papers, the fairy tale collapses. What’s left looks a lot more like carefully managed narrative control than a clean moment of constitutional epiphany.

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The Official Myth: Fear Made Him Flip

The version hammered into textbooks is neat:

• Roosevelt, enraged that the Court kept striking down New Deal laws, unveils a court-packing scheme.
• To save the Court from being expanded and diluted, Justice Owen Roberts, a swing vote, switches sides in a key case—West Coast Hotel v. Parrish—upholding a state minimum-wage law.
• The press christens it: “the switch in time that saved nine.”

In this script, Roberts is reacting to FDR’s public threat. Cause and effect. President roars, justice flinches, Court survives.

But that story only works if you ignore one thing:

The Court’s own records show Roberts had already switched before Roosevelt ever unveiled his plan.

Inside the Black Box: What the Docket Really Shows

The Supreme Court loves secrecy. Conferences are closed. Votes are hidden. All the public sees is the polished opinion months later, as if it came down from the mountain tablets fully formed.

Except the paper trail never completely disappears.

Historians eventually pried open Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes’s notes and internal documents: conference memoranda, docket logs, vote tallies. And those scraps tell a very different story.

Here’s what the hidden timeline looks like:

• June 1936 – Morehead v. Tipaldo
  Roberts votes with the Court’s conservative “Four Horsemen” to strike down a New York minimum-wage law. Signal sent: the Court is hostile to aggressive regulation.
• November 1936 – FDR’s landslide
  Roosevelt wins reelection in a crushing victory. The voters just gave the New Deal a mandate that’s impossible to ignore.
• November 1936 – West Coast Hotel v. Parrish argued
  A Washington State minimum-wage law, on nearly identical issues to Tipaldo, lands on the Court’s doorstep. This is the rematch.
• December 1936 – The secret conference
  Behind closed doors, the justices meet in private conference to vote. Hughes’s notes and the Court’s internal records show this clearly:
  ➜ The vote is 5–4 to uphold the law.
  ➜ Owen Roberts has already switched—months before the public knows anything.

This is the crucial piece: on the internal docket, the “switch” is already a done deal in December 1936.

Then the Public Show Begins

Only after all of that, the visible drama starts:

• February 5, 1937 – The Court-packing plan
  Roosevelt finally announces the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill—his scheme to add justices and tilt the Court.
• March 29, 1937 – Decision released
  West Coast Hotel v. Parrish is made public: 5–4, minimum wage upheld, opinion by Chief Justice Hughes, Roberts in the majority.

The timing is… suspiciously perfect. The Court, previously seen as the arch-enemy of the New Deal, suddenly produces a decision helpful to Roosevelt right after his threat goes public. The press, not having access to the December conference vote, stitches together the only story that makes sense in the dark:

FDR threatens the Court → Roberts panics → Roberts flips → Court is “saved.”

But if you lay the docket records over the newspaper headlines, the cause-and-effect flips:

• The actual vote happened in December 1936.
• The court-packing plan appears in February 1937.
• The opinion is announced in March 1937.

Roberts didn’t switch because of court-packing. He switched in the shadows first, and the announcement of his switch was timed in such a way that it could be read as a response to Roosevelt’s pressure.

Whether that timing was coincidence, quiet coordination, or institutional self-preservation is the part the Court never spells out.

Managing the Narrative: Who Saved Whom?

Consider what this clever sequencing accomplished:

• Roosevelt looks like his threat worked.
  The message to the public: the Court yielded; the system is responsive; no need to dismantle it.
• The Court looks “independent” while quietly adjusting course.
  Officially, the justices never admit fear or political calculation. But the outcome aligns with the landslide electoral mandate and diffuses a direct assault on the Court’s structure.
• Roberts becomes the perfect sacrificial symbol.
  One man, one “switch,” one neat story: easy to teach, easy to mythologize. The messy reality—pressure, elections, internal rifts, and long-term reputation management—vanishes behind a single catchy rhyme.

If you rely only on public dates and headlines, the story is simple: threat → switch → salvation.

If you follow the docket entries, conference notes, and the internal voting record, you get something more like:

Electoral earthquake → private recalibration → public opinion timed to defuse a constitutional showdown.

The Court didn’t just “get scared” in February 1937. It had already quietly shifted months earlier—then let the public think it was reacting in real time.

The “Switch in Time” as Controlled Myth

None of this requires a smoke-filled room with a signed confession. The Supreme Court’s power rests on perception:

• It needs to look above politics while reading the political weather.
• It needs to appear stable while staying just flexible enough to survive.
• It needs stories—like “the switch in time that saved nine”—to frame its most dangerous moments as wise, almost accidental course corrections, not strategic retreats.

But once you bring the docket and conference record into the spotlight, that comforting myth cracks.

Roberts didn’t suddenly see the light because Roosevelt rattled a saber.
The Court’s internal paperwork shows he’d already moved.

The real “switch” may not have been a justice frightened into changing his mind—but a carefully managed reveal, timed to make it look like the Court bowed just enough, just in time, without ever admitting that it had bowed at all.