John Roberts

On September 29, 2005, John G. Roberts, Jr. was confirmed by the United States Senate as the seventeenth Chief Justice of the United States. Hours later he was sworn into office by Justice John Paul Stevens (the longest-serving member of the Court). His swearing-in marked the first addition to the Court in more than 11 years - the longest stretch without a new member since 1823. And at 50 years old, Roberts became the youngest Chief Justice since John Marshall took the bench in 1801 at the age of 45. This combination of factors - the age of the other Justices and Roberts' relative youth - suggests the potential for substantial influence on the Court for many years to come.

=Life Before the Supreme Court= Roberts grew up in Long Beach, Indiana, where his father worked as an executive for Bethlehem Steel. In high school, he was captain of the varsity football team and also wrestled, sang in the choir, co-edited the student newspaper, took part in drama productions, and served on the student council Executive Committee. These activities, combined with a strong academic record, earned him a spot at Harvard University, where he majored in history and distinguished himself academically, graduating a year early with highest honors. During the summers he worked at a steel mill back in Indiana to help pay his tuition.

After graduation, Roberts moved on to Harvard Law School, where he worked as managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. Again he distinguished himself academically, graduating with high honors and catching the eye of Judge Henry Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Friendly, one of the most widely respected appellate court judges in the country, hired Roberts as his law clerk. At the end of a year, Roberts moved on to another clerkship, this one to then-Justice William H. Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court (the man whom he eventually replaced as Chief Justice). When he finished his Supreme Court clerkship in 1981, he was hired by the Reagan administration, first as a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General and then as Associate Counsel to the President.

After a two-year hiatus from government service between 1986-1988, Roberts returned to a Republican administration to take the post of Deputy Solicitor General. In this capacity he argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government, winning well over half of them. When Democrat Bill Clinton won the 1992 Presidential election, Roberts returned to private practice. He became a partner at Hogan and Hartson, a prestigious Washington, D.C. firm, where he ran the appellate division and continued to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

=Nomination and Appointment to the Supreme Court= Roberts worked for Hogan and Hartson for the next decade, earning a yearly salary of more than $1 million. Then, in 2001, President George W. Bush nominated him to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, widely considered the most important intermediate appellate court in the country. Roberts' initial nomination was never voted on by the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee and was therefore never addressed by the full Senate. In 2003, President Bush renominated Roberts in a Republican-controlled Senate; he was confirmed by a voice vote with little opposition.

During his time on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Roberts wrote 49 opinions. Only two of his decisions were not unanimous, and he only dissented from other judges' opinions three times. According to University of Chicago Law Professor Cass Sunstein, his circuit court opinions suggest that he is a "judicial minimalist," emphasizing respect for precedent rather than a broader, more controversial approach like originalism.

Little more can be discerned about Roberts' judicial outlook from his circuit court decisions or from his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which some Senators and pundits complained was overly evasive. What can be gathered about his likely impact on the Court, however, is the administrative effect he is likely to have. Both during his testimony and in comments made before his nomination, Roberts suggested that he would like to see the Court reverse the trend of decreasing its docket size. While Roberts will have no more actual say in deciding to hear cases than any of the other justices - four justices have to agree to hear a case before it is placed on the Court's docket - he will nevertheless be able to exert strong influence on other justices from his position as Chief Justice. While this change would not be particularly glamorous or get much media attention, it could lead to a significant strengthening of the Supreme Court's role in interpreting and applying some of the more mundane aspects of American law. In the end, it may help to reshape the Court in Chief Justice Roberts' image: deliberate and well-reasoned, with less emphasis on hot-button issues than the general public has come to expect.

=Career on the Supreme Court= Roberts took the Constitutional oath of office, administered by senior Associate Justice John Paul Stevens at the White House, on September 29. On October 3, he took the judicial oath provided for by the Judiciary Act of 1789 at the United States Supreme Court building, prior to the first oral arguments of the 2005 term. Ending weeks of speculation, Roberts wore a plain black robe, dispensing with the gold sleeve-bars added to the Chief Justice's robes by his predecessor. Then 50, Roberts became the youngest member of the Court, and the third-youngest person to have ever become Chief Justice (John Jay was appointed at age 44 in 1789 while John Marshall was appointed at age 45 in 1801). However, many Associate Justices, such as Clarence Thomas (appointed at age 43) and William O. Douglas (appointed at age 41 in 1939), have joined the Court at a younger age than Roberts.

Since joining the court, Justice Antonin Scalia has said that Roberts "pretty much run[s] the show the same way" as Rehnquist, albeit "let[ting] people go on a little longer at conference ... but [he'll] get over that."

Early Decisions
On January 17, 2006, Roberts dissented along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in Gonzales v. Oregon, which held that the Controlled Substances Act does not allow the United States Attorney General to prohibit physicians from prescribing drugs for the assisted suicide of the terminally ill as permitted by an Oregon law. The point of contention in this case was largely one of statutory interpretation, not federalism.

On March 6, 2006, Roberts wrote the unanimous decision in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights that colleges accepting federal money must allow military recruiters on campus, despite university objections to the Clinton administration-initiated "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay people in the military.

4th Amendment
Roberts wrote his first dissent in the case Georgia v. Randolph, decided March 22, 2006. The majority's decision prohibited police from searching a home if, as in this case, both occupants are present but one occupant objected while another consented. Roberts' dissent criticized the majority opinion as inconsistent with prior case law and for basing its reasoning in part on its perception of social custom.

Notice and Oppertunity to be heard
Although Roberts has often sided with Scalia and Thomas, Roberts provided a crucial vote against their position in Jones v. Flowers. In Jones, Roberts sided with the liberal bloc of the court in ruling that, before a home is seized and sold in a tax-forfeiture sale, due diligence must be demonstrated and proper notification needs to be sent to the owners. Dissenting were Anthony M. Kennedy along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Samuel A. Alito did not participate, while Roberts's ruling was joined by David Souter, Stephen G. Breyer, John Paul Stevens, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Abortion
On the Supreme Court, Roberts has indicated he supports some abortion restrictions. In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the only significant abortion case the court has decided since Roberts joined, he voted with the majority to uphold the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for a five-justice majority, distinguished Stenberg v. Carhart, and concluded that the court's previous decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey did not prevent Congress from banning the procedure. The decision left the door open for future as-applied challenges, and did not address the broader question of whether Congress had the authority to pass the law. Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion, contending that the Court's prior decisions in Roe v. Wade and Casey should be reversed; Roberts declined to join that opinion.

Equal Protection Clause
Roberts opposes the use of race in assigning students to particular schools, including for purposes such as maintaining integrated schools. He sees such plans as discrimination in violation of the constitution's equal protection clause and Brown v. Board of Education. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the court considered two voluntarily-adopted school district plans that relied on race to determine which schools certain children may attend. The court had held in Brown that "racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional," and later, that "racial classifications, imposed by whatever federal, state, or local governmental actor, ... are constitutional only if they are narrowly tailored measures that further compelling governmental interests," and that this "[n]arrow tailoring ... require[s] serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives." Roberts cited these cases in writing for the Parents Involved majority, concluding that the school districts had "failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals." In a section of the opinion joined by four other Justices, Roberts added that "[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Free Speach
Roberts authored the 2007 student free speech case Morse v. Frederick, ruling that a student in a public school-sponsored activity does not have the right to advocate drug use on the basis that the right to free speech does not invariably prevent the exercise of school discipline.

Nonjudicial duties of the Chief Justice
As Chief Justice, Roberts also serves in a variety of roles that are not strictly judicial, including Chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution and leading the Judicial Conference of the United States. Perhaps the highest profile of these is the custom of the Chief Justice administering the oath of office at Presidential inaugurations.

Roberts debuted in this capacity at the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009. As a Senator, Obama had voted against Roberts' confirmation to the Supreme Court, making the event doubly a first: the first time a president was sworn in by someone whose confirmation they opposed. Things did not go smoothly. During the ceremony, Roberts paused momentarily after prompting Obama with "I, Barack Hussein Obama", and the new president began repeating these words at the same time the justice continued with the next phrase. Roberts then misplaced the word "faithfully" in the text of the oath and erroneously replaced the phrase "President of the United States" with "President to the United States" before restating the phrase correctly. When the oath itself was completed, Roberts did not conclude his prompts in the first person, as is recent tradition. He instead concluded by asking Obama, "So help you God?" which the president answered with the traditional, "So help me God." The Associated Press has reported that "[l]ater, as the two men shook hands in the Capitol, Roberts appeared to say the mistake was his fault."

The following evening, in the White House Map Room with reporters present, Roberts and Obama repeated the oath correctly. This was, according to the White House, to ensure with "an abundance of caution" that the Constitutional requirement had been met.