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Full-Text Articles in Law

John Roberts And Owen Roberts: Echoes Of The Switch In Time In The Chief Justice’S Jurisprudence, Luke G. Cleland Jun 2023

John Roberts And Owen Roberts: Echoes Of The Switch In Time In The Chief Justice’S Jurisprudence, Luke G. Cleland

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman Oct 2016

Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

Owen Roberts was accused of a variety of things in 1937, but “fidelity” was not among them. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone and Professor Felix Frankfurter were among many who accused Roberts of performing, as Frankfurter put it, a jurisprudential “somersault” “incapable of being attributed to a single factor relevant to the professed judicial process.” To Frankfurter, it was “all painful beyond words,” and gave him “a sickening feeling which is aroused when moral standards are adulterated in a convent.” Yet when Roberts announced his retirement from the Court eight years later, Chief Justice Stone, along with now-Justices Frankfurter and Robert …


Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

No abstract provided.


Did A Switch In Time Save Nine?, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn Jan 2010

Did A Switch In Time Save Nine?, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s court-packing plan of 1937 and the “switch in time that saved nine” animate central questions of law, politics, and history. Did Supreme Court Justice Roberts abruptly switch votes in 1937 to avert a showdown with Roosevelt? Scholars disagree vigorously about whether Roberts’s transformation was gradual and anticipated or abrupt and unexpected. Using newly collected data of votes from the 1931–1940 terms, we contribute to the historical understanding of this episode by providing the first quantitative evidence of Roberts’s transformation. Applying modern measurement methods, we show that Roberts shifted sharply to the left in the 1936 term. The …


Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman Dec 1999

Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.


Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman Jan 1999

Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

Owen Roberts was accused of a variety of things in 1937, but “fidelity” was not among them. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone and Professor Felix Frankfurter were among many who accused Roberts of performing, as Frankfurter put it, a jurisprudential “somersault” “incapable of being attributed to a single factor relevant to the professed judicial process.” To Frankfurter, it was “all painful beyond words,” and gave him “a sickening feeling which is aroused when moral standards are adulterated in a convent.” Yet when Roberts announced his retirement from the Court eight years later, Chief Justice Stone, along with now-Justices Frankfurter and Robert …