The Switch In Time That Saved Nine
“The switch in time that saved nine” is the name given to what was perceived as the sudden jurisprudential shift by Associate Justice Owen Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. 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 Roosevelt's court-reform bill (also known as the "court-packing plan"), which would have expanded the size of the bench up to 15 justices, though it has been argued that these accounts have misconstrued the historical record.
The term itself is a reference to the aphorism "A stitch in time saves nine," meaning that preventive maintenance is preferable.
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