THE BIG SWITCH: JUSTICE ROBERTS AND THE MINIMUM-WAGE CASES*.

It was in the seventh year of the Chief Justiceship of Charles Evans Hughes that the Supreme Court of the United States gave up the fifty-year fight, which it had been waging intermittently against social and economic reform. The culmination of the Court's campaign came in 1935 and 1936 when, in a little more than twelve months, the high tribunal smashed much of the New Deal program. The Court's final attempt to protect business against government regulation came on June 1, 1936, when it overturned a New York minimum-wage law for women and children. Within twelve months, the Supreme Court surrendered to the New Deal. The judicial bastion of laissez-faire economics crumbled before the concept of governmental responsibility for the state of the economy and the welfare of the people. Central to this change was Justice Owen J. Roberts. Carrying his majority-making ballot like a white flag of truce, Roberts switched from the conservative to the liberal bloc of the Court. State minimum-wage legislation was the focal point of the Court's conversion from an opponent into a supporter of social and economic reform.