John Roberts
| John Roberts | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 17th Chief Justice of the United States | |
| Assumed office September 29, 2005 | |
| Nominated by | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | William Rehnquist |
| Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit | |
| In office June 2, 2003 – September 29, 2005 | |
| Nominated by | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | James L. Buckley |
| Succeeded by | Patricia Ann Millett |
| Personal details | |
| Born | John Glover Roberts Jr. January 27, 1955 Buffalo, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican[1] |
| Spouse(s) | Jane Sullivan (m. 1996) |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Harvard University (AB, JD) |
| Signature |  |
Roberts grew up in northwest Indiana and was educated in a private school. He then attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. After being admitted to the bar, he served as a law clerk for Henry Friendly and then Rehnquist before taking a position in the attorney general's office during the Reagan Administration. He went on to serve the Reagan administration and the George H. W. Bush administration in the Department of Justice and the Office of the White House Counsel, before spending 14 years in private law practice. During this time, he argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court.[2] Notably, he represented 19 states in United States v. Microsoft.[3]
In 2003, Roberts was appointed as a judge of the D.C. Circuit by George W. Bush. During his two-year tenure on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts authored 49 opinions, eliciting two dissents from other judges, and authoring three dissents of his own.[4] In 2005, Roberts was nominated to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court, initially to succeed retiring Sandra Day O'Connor. When Rehnquist died before Roberts's confirmation hearings began, Bush instead nominated Roberts to fill the chief justice position.
Roberts has authored the majority opinion in many landmark cases, including Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, Shelby County v. Holder, and National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius.
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[hide]Early life and education[edit]
John Glover Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Rosemary (née Podrasky) and John Glover "Jack" Roberts Sr. (1928–2008). His father was a plant manager with Bethlehem Steel.[5] He has Irish, Welsh, and Czech ancestry.[6] When Roberts was in fourth grade, his family moved to Long Beach, Indiana. He grew up with three sisters: Kathy, Peggy, and Berbere.Roberts attended Notre Dame Elementary School, a Roman Catholic grade school in Long Beach. In 1973, he graduated from La Lumiere School, a Roman Catholic boarding school in La Porte, Indiana, where he was an excellent student and athlete.[7] He studied five years of Latin (in four years),[5] some French, and was known generally for his devotion to his studies. He was captain of the football team (he later described himself as a "slow-footed linebacker"), and was a regional champion in wrestling. He participated in choir and drama, co-edited the school newspaper, and served on the athletic council and the executive committee of the student council.[5]
He attended Harvard College, graduating in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude in history in three years. He then attended Harvard Law School where he was a managing editor of the Harvard Law Review.[5] He graduated from law school with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude in 1979.[8]
Early legal career[edit]
Graduating from law school, Roberts served as a law clerk for Henry Friendly on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for one year.[5] Roberts frequently cites Friendly in his opinions. From 1980 to 1981, he clerked for then-associate justice William Rehnquist on the United States Supreme Court. From 1981 to 1982, he served in the Reagan administration as a special assistant to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith.[5] From 1982 to 1986, Roberts served as associate counsel to the president under White House counsel Fred Fielding. Roberts then entered private law practice as an associate at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Hogan & Hartson, now known as Hogan Lovells.[9] As part of Hogan & Hartson's pro bono work, he worked behind the scenes for gay rights advocates, reviewing filings and preparing arguments for the Supreme Court case Romer v. Evans (1996), which was described in 2005 as "the movement's most important legal victory". Roberts also argued on behalf of the homeless, a case which became one of Roberts' "few appellate losses."[10] Another pro bono matter was a death penalty case in which he represented John Ferguson, who was convicted of killing 30 people in Florida.[11][12]Roberts left Hogan & Hartson to serve in the George H. W. Bush administration as principal deputy solicitor general, from 1989 to 1993[5] and as acting solicitor general for the purposes of at least one case when Ken Starr had a conflict.[13][14]
In 1992, George H. W. Bush nominated Roberts to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but no Senate vote was held, and Roberts's nomination expired at the end of the 102nd Congress.[15]
Roberts returned to Hogan & Hartson as a partner and became the head of the firm's appellate practice in addition to serving as an adjunct faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center. During this time, Roberts argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, prevailing in 25 of them.[16] He represented 19 states in United States v. Microsoft.[3] Those cases include:
Federalist Society.[17]
In 2000, Roberts traveled to Tallahassee, Florida to advise Jeb Bush, then the Governor of Florida, concerning the latter's actions in the Florida election recount during the presidential election.[18]
On the D.C. Circuit[edit]
On May 10, 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Roberts for a different seat on the D.C. Circuit, which had been vacated by James L. Buckley. The Senate at the time, however, was controlled by the Democrats, who were in conflict with Bush over his judicial nominees. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-VT, refused to give Roberts a hearing in the 107th Congress.[19] The GOP regained control of the Senate on January 7, 2003, and Bush resubmitted Roberts's nomination that day. Roberts was confirmed on May 8, 2003,[20] and received his commission on June 2, 2003.[21] During his two-year tenure on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts authored 49 opinions, eliciting two dissents from other judges, and authoring three dissents of his own.[4]Notable decisions on the D.C. Circuit include the following:
Fourth and Fifth Amendments[edit]
Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 386 F.3d 1148,[22] involved a 12-year-old girl who was arrested, searched, handcuffed, driven to police headquarters, booked, and fingerprinted after she violated a publicly advertised zero tolerance "no eating" policy in a Washington Metro station by eating a single french fry. She was released to her mother three hours later. She sued, alleging that an adult would have only received a citation for the same offense, while children must be detained until parents are notified. The D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court's dismissal of the girl's lawsuit, which was predicated on alleged violations of the Fourth Amendment (unreasonable search and seizure) and Fifth Amendment (equal protection)."No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation," Roberts wrote, and noted that the policies under which the girl was apprehended had since been changed. Because age discrimination is evaluated using a rational basis test, however, only weak state interests were required to justify the policy, and the panel concluded they were present. "Because parents and guardians play an essential role in that rehabilitative process, it is reasonable for the District to seek to ensure their participation, and the method chosen—detention until the parent is notified and retrieves the child—certainly does that, in a way issuing a citation might not." The court concluded that the policy and detention were constitutional, noting that "the question before us... is not whether these policies were a bad idea, but whether they violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution," language reminiscent of Justice Potter Stewart's dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut. "We are not asked in this case to say whether we think this law is unwise, or even asinine," Stewart had written; "[w]e are asked to hold that it violates the United States Constitution. And that, I cannot do."
Military tribunals[edit]
In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Roberts was part of a unanimous Circuit panel overturning the district court ruling and upholding military tribunals set up by the Bush administration for trying terrorism suspects known as enemy combatants. Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph, writing for the court, ruled that Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden,[23] could be tried by a military court because:- the military commission had the approval of the United States Congress;
- the Third Geneva Convention is a treaty between nations and as such it does not confer individual rights and remedies enforceable in U.S. courts;
- even if the Convention could be enforced in U.S. courts, it would not be of assistance to Hamdan at the time because, for a conflict such as the war against Al-Qaeda (considered by the court as a separate war from that against Afghanistan itself) that is not between two countries, it guarantees only a certain standard of judicial procedure without speaking to the jurisdiction in which the prisoner must be tried.
Environmental regulation[edit]
Roberts wrote a dissent in Rancho Viejo, LLC v. Norton, 323 F.3d 1062, a case involving the protection of a rare California toad under the Endangered Species Act. When the court denied a rehearing en banc, 334 F.3d 1158 (D.C. Cir. 2003), Roberts dissented, arguing that the panel opinion was inconsistent with United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison in that it incorrectly focused on whether the regulation substantially affects interstate commerce rather than on whether the regulated activity does. In Roberts's view, the Commerce Clause of the Constitution did not permit the government to regulate activity affecting what he called "a hapless toad" that "for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California." He said that reviewing the panel decision would allow the court "alternative grounds for sustaining application of the Act that may be more consistent with Supreme Court precedent."[26]Nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court[edit]
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died on September 3, 2005, while Roberts's confirmation was still pending before the Senate. Shortly thereafter, on September 5, Bush withdrew Roberts's nomination as O'Connor's successor and announced Roberts's new nomination to the position of Chief Justice.[27] Bush asked the Senate to expedite Roberts's confirmation hearings to fill the vacancy by the beginning of the Supreme Court's session in early October.
Roberts's testimony on his jurisprudence[edit]
During his confirmation hearings, Roberts said that he did not have a comprehensive jurisprudential philosophy, and he did "not think beginning with an all-encompassing approach to constitutional interpretation is the best way to faithfully construe the document".[28][29] Roberts analogized judges to baseball umpires: "[I]t's my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat."[30] Roberts demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of Supreme Court precedent, which he discussed without notes. Among the issues he discussed were:Commerce Clause[edit]
In Senate hearings, Roberts has stated:Starting with McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall gave a very broad and expansive reading to the powers of the Federal Government and explained generally that if the ends be legitimate, then any means chosen to achieve them are within the power of the Federal Government, and cases interpreting that, throughout the years, have come down. Certainly, by the time Lopez was decided, many of us had learned in law school that it was just sort of a formality to say that interstate commerce was affected and that cases weren't going to be thrown out that way. Lopez certainly breathed new life into the Commerce Clause.
I think it remains to be seen, in subsequent decisions, how rigorous a showing, and in many cases, it is just a showing. It's not a question of an abstract fact, does this affect interstate commerce or not, but has this body, the Congress, demonstrated the impact on interstate commerce that drove them to legislate? That's a very important factor. It wasn't present in Lopez at all. I think the members of Congress had heard the same thing I had heard in law school, that this is unimportant—and they hadn't gone through the process of establishing a record in that case.[29]
Federalism[edit]
Roberts stated the following about federalism in a 1999 radio interview:We have gotten to the point these days where we think the only way we can show we’re serious about a problem is if we pass a federal law, whether it is the Violence Against Women Act or anything else. The fact of the matter is conditions are different in different states, and state laws can be more relevant is I think exactly the right term, more attune to the different situations in New York, as opposed to Minnesota, and that is what the Federal system is based on.[31]
Reviewing Acts of Congress[edit]
At a Senate hearing, Roberts stated:The Supreme Court has, throughout its history, on many occasions described the deference that is due to legislative judgments. Justice Holmes described assessing the constitutionality of an act of Congress as the gravest duty that the Supreme Court is called upon to perform. ... It's a principle that is easily stated and needs to be observed in practice, as well as in theory.
Now, the Court, of course, has the obligation, and has been recognized since Marbury v. Madison, to assess the constitutionality of acts of Congress, and when those acts are challenged, it is the obligation of the Court to say what the law is. The determination of when deference to legislative policy judgments goes too far and becomes abdication of the judicial responsibility, and when scrutiny of those judgments goes too far on the part of the judges and becomes what I think is properly called judicial activism, that is certainly the central dilemma of having an unelected, as you describe it correctly, undemocratic judiciary in a democratic republic.[29]
Stare decisis[edit]
On the subject of stare decisis, referring to Brown v. Board, the decision overturning school segregation, Roberts said that "the Court in that case, of course, overruled a prior decision. I don't think that constitutes judicial activism because obviously if the decision is wrong, it should be overruled. That's not activism. That's applying the law correctly."[32]Roe v. Wade[edit]
While working as a lawyer for the Reagan administration, Roberts wrote legal memos defending administration policies on abortion.[33] At his nomination hearing Roberts testified that the legal memos represented the views of the administration he was representing at the time and not necessarily his own.[34] "Senator, I was a staff lawyer; I didn't have a position," Roberts said.[34] As a lawyer in the George H. W. Bush administration, Roberts signed a legal brief urging the court to overturn Roe v. Wade.[35]In private meetings with senators before his confirmation, Roberts testified that Roe was settled law, but added that it was subject to the legal principle of stare decisis,[36] meaning that while the Court must give some weight to the precedent, it was not legally bound to uphold it.
In his Senate testimony, Roberts said that, while sitting on the Appellate Court, he had an obligation to respect precedents established by the Supreme Court, including the right to an abortion. He stated: "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. ... There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent, as well as Casey." Following the traditional reluctance of nominees to indicate which way they might vote on an issue likely to come before the Supreme Court, he did not explicitly say whether he would vote to overturn either.[28]
Confirmation[edit]
On September 22, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Roberts's nomination by a vote of 13–5, with Senators Ted Kennedy, Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer, Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein casting the dissenting votes. Roberts was confirmed by the full Senate on September 29 by a margin of 78–22.[37] All Republicans and the one Independent voted for Roberts; the Democrats split evenly, 22–22. Roberts was confirmed by what was, historically, a narrow margin for a Supreme Court justice. However, all subsequent confirmation votes have been even narrower.[38][39][40]On the U.S. Supreme Court[edit]
Roberts is sworn in as Chief Justice by Justice John Paul Stevens in the East Room of the White House, September 29, 2005.
Justice Antonin Scalia 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."[41] Roberts has been portrayed as a consistent advocate for conservative principles by analysts such as Jeffrey Toobin.[42]
Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Sykes, surveying Roberts's first term on the court, concluded that his jurisprudence "appears to be strongly rooted in the discipline of traditional legal method, evincing a fidelity to text, structure, history, and the constitutional hierarchy. He exhibits the restraint that flows from the careful application of established decisional rules and the practice of reasoning from the case law. He appears to place great stock in the process-oriented tools and doctrinal rules that guard against the aggregation of judicial power and keep judicial discretion in check: jurisdictional limits, structural federalism, textualism, and the procedural rules that govern the scope of judicial review."[43] The Chief Justice is ranked 50th in the 2016 Forbes ranking of "The World's Most Powerful People."[44]
Early decisions[edit]
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 the 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.
Fourth Amendment[edit]
Roberts wrote his first dissent in Georgia v. Randolph (2006). The majority's decision prohibited police from searching a home if both occupants are present but one objected and the other consented. Roberts criticized the majority opinion as inconsistent with prior case law and for partly basing its reasoning on its perception of social custom. He said the social expectations test was flawed because the Fourth Amendment protects a legitimate expectation of privacy, not social expectations.[45]In Utah v. Strieff (2016), Roberts joined the majority in ruling (5-3) that a person with an outstanding warrant may be arrested and searched, and that any evidence discovered based on that search is admissible in court; the majority opinion held that this remains true even when police act unlawfully by stopping a person without probable cause, before learning of the existence of the outstanding warrant.[46]
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