ABSTRACT
On 5 February 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt, reacting to a long string of Supreme Court decisions that were hostile to the New Deal, asked Congress to empower him to “pack” the Court with as many as six new justices, one for every sitting justice 70 years or older who, having served at least ten years, declined to retire. The proposal was highly controversial from the start, and whatever chance for passage it may have had was lost that spring when the Court abandoned its anti-New Deal posture in a series of cases that was instantly dubbed “the switch in time that saved nine.” A watered-down version of the Court-packing plan was tabled into oblivion on 22 July 1937 by a Senate vote of 70 to 20.
