John Roberts

Chief Justice John Roberts.

John Roberts has been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court since being nominated by George W. Bush and taking his seat on September 29, 2005. Previously, he had clerked in the United States Court of Appeals and practiced law privately. Chief Justice Roberts is a conservative-leaning justice on the Supreme Court, and since taking his position, he has sought to create a balance and impartial court that decides based on legal standing and history rather than on a political basis.

Born John Glover Roberts Jr. on January 27, 1955, John Roberts was the second of four children born to parents John G. Roberts and Rosemary Roberts (nee Podrasky) in Buffalo, New York. Roberts, Sr. worked as an executive for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and a promotion moved the family to Long Beach, Indiana, in 1960.

John Roberts during his Harvard years.

Typical of other Supreme Court justices, Roberts excelled in school. He attended La Lumiere High School, a Roman Catholic boarding school in La Porte, Indiana, where he was co-captain of the school football team and graduated first in his class. He went on to attend Harvard University, where he would graduate summa cum laude in 1976 with a degree in history, before attending Harvard Law School. At Harvard, Roberts served as a managing editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1979.

After law school, Roberts spent two years as a law clerk. First for Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, from 1979-1980. Then as a law clerk for then-Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1980 term. Roberts then went to work in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, first in the attorney general's office before moving to the White House counsel's office.

John Roberts during his years at Hogan & Hartson.

From 1986 to 1989, and again from 1993 to 2003, Roberts worked in private practice at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Hogan & Hartson. There, his career as an appellate lawyer was successful and prominent, during which he would argue thirty-nine cases before the Supreme Court, of which he won twenty-five. Roberts also appeared regularly on National Public Radio (NPR) to provide analysis of Supreme Court cases.

In 1992, at age thirty-seven, Chief Justice Roberts was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President George H.W. Bush. However, the nomination languished, and in 1993, Roberts returned to Hogan & Hartson. He worked there until 2001, when President George W. Bush nominated Roberts for a seat on the D.C. Circuit, a nomination confirmed by unanimous consent on May 8, 2003.

John Roberts during Supreme Court nomination from George W. Bush.

In July 2005, Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush. The nomination was intended to fill the vacancy left in the retirement of Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. However, before the nomination of Roberts could be confirmed, then Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died. Roberts's nomination for associate justice was withdrawn, and in September, Bush re-nominated Roberts—but to replace Rehnquist as chief justice. O'Connor would eventually be replaced by Samuel A. Alito.

On September 29, 2005, the Senate confirmed Roberts for chief justice by a vote of 78-22. Chief Justice John Roberts was sworn in on the same day. Roberts would speak of the importance of judicial restraint, along with his commitment to that restraint, during his confirmation hearing. This included the idea that judges should neutrally apply the law rather than engage in political application or creative law-making. This led Roberts to one of his more popular declarations:

Judges and Justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules, they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules, but it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.

John Roberts during confirmation hearings.

During the confirmation hearings, Roberts was praised by senators from both parties for his intelligence, credentials, diligence, and professionalism, although some Democratic senators expressed concern over Roberts's commitment to civil rights. Some of those critics believed the appointment of Roberts would go as far to undermine or overturn progress made in regards to civil rights, with some citing memoranda Roberts had written during his years working in the Reagan administration in regards to discrimination against women and minorities and legal efforts to remedy that discrimination. Supporters of Roberts argued he had written these comments to express the views of his clients, at the time the Republican administration, as required by attorneys.

John Roberts at the 2017 commencement speech.

The duties of the chief justice extend beyond the Supreme Court's chambers and include administering the oath of office of the president of the United States. Roberts administered the oath to Obama in 2009 and 2013, to Donald Trump in 2017, and to Biden in 2021. Roberts has also continued a tradition, begun by Chief Justice Warren Burger, of writing an annual "Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary." In these reports, Roberts has praised the work of personnel and programs of the federal judiciary, explained new rules and processes, and pleaded for better pay for federal judges. In 2017, Roberts received attention for a commencement address given at his son's middle school. In the speech, which was considered unconventional, Roberts stated:

Now the commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I'll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don't take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you'll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.

Since his confirmation, Roberts has sought to project the image of the institutionalist and be a beacon of integrity who works to champion the Supreme Court's role as an impartial arbiter of the law. He has sought to protect the Supreme Court from interference by the executive or legislative branch and place the court above ideology and partisan politics. During his time as chief justice, Roberts has regularly joined conservative justices in embracing legal interpretations that have pushed United States constitutional law in conservative directions on abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance, federalism, gun rights, and religious liberty. However, in some cases, Roberts has surprised the Court and joined liberal justices, such as in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020).

Roberts has described his approach as chief justice as trying to build more unanimity within the Court and amongst the associated justices and overall work to issue fewer 5-4 decisions. Given Roberts's conservative standing and his tendency to vote most often with the conservative justices, his tendency to side with liberals in some cases has led to criticism of Roberts from conservative lawyers and Republican activists for being, in their terms, a "turncoat." The Harvard Law Review stated Roberts, during the 2020 term, sided with liberal associate justice Stephen Breyer 66 percent of the time, compared with 65 percent of the time that he sided with conservative associate justice Clarence Thomas.

The Martin-Quinn score was developed by political scientists Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn from the University of Michigan and is used to measure the justices of the Supreme Court along an ideological continuum. The further from zero on the scale, the more conservative (>0) or liberal (<0) the justice. Roberts's Martin-Quinn score following the 2020-2021 term was a 0.51, making him the sixth-most conservative justice on the court at the time and the most centrist justice. This score backs up Roberts's approach to the law and his belief in judicial restraint.

In 2007, the Court saw arguments for the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District no. 1, in which the central issue was whether it was constitutionally permissible for a public school district to consider race in their school admissions, particularly schools that historically had not operated segregated schools. This put in focus the issues of classifying students by race and relying upon racial classifications to make school assignments. These schools in the district voluntarily adopted plans that assigned students to schools based on their race. For example, the Seattle School District classified children as white or nonwhite, and this was used to allocate slots in oversubscribed high schools and to rule on transfer requests. This was to manage a school's racial balance within a predetermined range based on the racial composition of the school district as a whole. Parents of students who, under this scheme, were denied assignment to particular schools because of their race brought suit and contended that allocating children to different public schools based on race violated the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Washington state law. The majority opinion of the Court found these school policies to be poorly founded, and the parents who brought suit were found to be in favor. The Court found the school district's racial tiebreaker plan unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Writing for the majority opinion, Roberts wrote:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Better known as the challenge to the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act (ACA), the National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius saw challengers to the law argue that the federal government under the Commerce Clause could not make individuals purchase a good or service. In this case, that good or service was healthcare. Roberts, writing the majority opinion, which upheld the ACA, agreed with the challenger's interpretation. But he allowed the law to stand based on Congress's authority to levy a tax.

In this case, the court saw petitioners who, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), did not want to purchase health insurance, arguing that in Virginia (where they lived), the Virginia Exchange did not qualify as an exchange established by the state, and therefore, they should not receive any tax credits. Under ACA, in the case a state failed to establish an exchange, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would establish one for them. Further, to limit the number of individuals who fell under the low-income exemption, the ACA authorized tax credits to offset the cost of coverage, which under the language of the statute were for those enrolled via these exchanges. Part of the question of the case was whether the Internal Revenue Service regulation violated congressional prerogatives under the Affordable Care Act. In a 6-3 majority, the Court held that Congress's intent was for those tax credits to go to individuals who signed up for health insurance through the exchanges regardless of whether the exchanges were established by the state or federal government.

In this case, the Court looked at two cases and issued a joint ruling that found that partisan gerrymandering claims presented political questions beyond the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. In a 5-4 decision, Roberts wrote the majority opinion, in which he said:

Partisan gerrymandering claims rest on an instinct that groups with a certain level of political support should enjoy a commensurate level of political power and influence. Explicitly or implicitly, a districting map is alleged to be unconstitutional because it makes it too difficult for one part to translate statewide support into seats in the legislature. But such a claim is based on a 'norm that does not exist' in our electoral system - 'statewide elections for representatives along party lines.' [Federal] courts are not equipped to apportion political power as a matter of fairness, nor is there any basis for concluding that they were authorized to do so.

In this case, the Court heard arguments around copyright law and the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA). In the Court's 5-4 decision, the Court upheld a decision that under the government edicts doctrine, officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be authors of the works they create in their official duties. Therefore, they could not protect those under copyright law, and the OCGA annotations are ineligible for copyright protection. In the decision, Roberts wrote:

Under what has been dubbed the government edicts doctrine, officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of - and therefore cannot copyright - the works they create in the course of their official duties. ... Copyright does not vest in works that are (1) created by judges and legislators (2) in the course of their judicial and legislative duties.

In this case, Roberts and the Court heard a case over whether the Department of Homeland Security lawfully ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The Court would rule, in a 5-4 majority decision, that the DHS did not properly follow the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The Court held that DHS failed to provide the required analysis of all relevant factors associated with ending the program and, therefore, made the decision arbitrary and capricious. The court gave the issue back to the DHS, which remained free to reattempt to end the program with a proper explanation for the decision. In the majority opinion, Roberts wrote:

The dispute before the Court is not whether DHS may rescind DACA. All parties agree that it may. The dispute is instead primarily about the procedure the agency followed in doing so. ... Because DHS was 'not writing on a blank slate,' ... it was required to assess whether there were reliance interests, determine whether they were significant, and weigh any such interests against competing policy concerns.

In this case, Roberts voted with the majority, a 6-3 majority, to uphold Title VII. In the case, Gerald Bostock sued for discrimination following his termination on grounds of sexual orientation, arguing that the termination violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The federal district court dismissed the case, and, on appeal, the 11th Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling. In the Supreme Court decision, they reversed these previous decisions and held that an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII.

This case saw Roberts author a 5-4 majority decision in which the court held that the system granting Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) the power to issue final decisions without effective oversight was unconstitutional. The previous decision had been to remove the statutory provisions that blocked the director of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) from unilaterally reviewing APJ decisions. And the Court's decision ruled that the Appointments Clause did not allow APJs to decide patent disputes without oversight from the PTO. For the majority opinion, Roberts wrote:

Today, we reaffirm and apply the rule from Edmond that the exercise of executive power by inferior officers must at some level be subject to the direction and supervision of an officer nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Constitution therefore forbids the enforcement of statutory restrictions on the Director that insulate the decisions of APJs from his direction and supervision. To be clear, the Director need not review every decision of the PTAB. What matters is that the Director have the discretion to review decisions rendered by APJs. In this way, the President remains responsible for the exercise of executive power - and through him, the exercise of executive power remains an accountable to the people.

In this case, Roberts authored an opinion concurring in judgment in the majority decision to uphold Mississippi's abortion law in question but would not overturn previous decisions made in Roe and Casey. Associate Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion, holding that the U.S. Constitution did not provide a right to abortion. Alito was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. In his opinion, Roberts wrote:

I would take a more measured course. I agree with the Court that the visibility line established by Roe and Casey should be discarded under a straightforward stare decisis analysis. That line never made any sense. Our abortion precedents describe the right at issue as a woman's right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. That right should therefore extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose, but need not extend any further - certainly not all the way to viability. Mississippi's law allows a woman three months to obtain an abortion, well beyond the point at which it is considered "late" to discover a pregnancy.

In this case, Roberts authored a 5-4 majority opinion, which held that a transportation order allowing a prisoner to search for new evidence is not necessary or appropriate in aid of a federal court's adjudication of a habeas corpus action in the case a prisoner has not sufficiently proven how the evidence would be admissible in connection with a claim for relief. This decision reversed a previous ruling.

Perhaps one of the defining features of the Roberts court will be the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, in which the previous precedent was established by the Roe and Casey decisions. Especially in light of Samuel Alito's argument, which, through its rationale, opened the potential of overturning other decisions. Roberts has sought to turn the Court from a political tool into an impartial referee, but arguably, the Court during Roberts's tenure has become more politically engaged, and Roberts has, according to some observers, lost the Court. This is mainly as Roberts has filed more dissenting opinions that have disagreed, if not outright criticized, his peers on the Court for what he has seen as a "radical expansion" of the court's jurisdiction. In the Dobbs decision, his streak of disagreeing with his peers would continue.

One of the defining features of the Dobbs decision was the leak of the draft opinion written by Samuel Alito. This leak was unprecedented, especially as the document leaked was confirmed to be authentic but did not represent a final decision by the Court, according to Roberts. At the time, Roberts ordered an investigation into the leak, as the leak, in his opinion, represented a betrayal of the confidence of the Court and undermined the Court's integrity. This leak further increased tension between the justices of the Court and their law clerks, where the leak was most likely to have occurred, according to some Court observers.

Despite the leak, Roberts affirmed that the Court would continue on its course and discharge its duties. This came as Roberts, among others, saw the leak as an attempt to intimidate the Court through the weight of public opinion to reverse their decision.

The deliberations, which Roberts said would be protected and would continue as they were, despite the leak, saw the justices arguing over whether the Dobbs decision needed to overturn the previous Roe and Casey decisions. It was later reported that, prior to the leak of the coming decision, Roberts was working to change the minds of the justices. This specifically saw Roberts working on Brett Kavanaugh to change his decision and save the previous Roe and Casey decisions. Or, more accurately, to uphold the 2018 Mississippi law, which allowed abortion before fifteen weeks, which the court had previously upheld as lawful.

This outreach was largely focused on associate justice Brett Kavanaugh. According to the Martin-Quinn scores from above, Kavanaugh ranks similar to Roberts, and the two of them previously worked together in the George H.W. Bush administrations and had been acquainted since the 1990s and have similar backgrounds. How close Roberts was to changing Kavanaugh's mind and preserving the established precedent in regards to abortion may never be known, as it was later reported that the leak of the Dobbs decision essentially ended any internal diplomacy and hardened the opinions of those involved, especially as some of the justices reportedly saw the leak as an attempt to intimidate them into changing their opinion.

In his concurring opinion, Roberts noted his partial dissent from his peers, with what he noted was a "relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue" that he could not share and which he observed on both sides of the case. May suggested that Roberts had lost the Court, lost his influence on the decision-making of the Court, and lost the powers of persuasion and diplomacy he tried to bring to the court since his assumption of the role of Chief Justice.

In the fallout of the Dobbs decision and the resulting discovery that Roberts had failed in his attempt to reverse the decision, some have called for the Chief Justice to retire from his position. This is, in some cases, in self-interest as some commentators want to rebalance the court with a liberal justice appointed under President Biden, as the justices nominated under previous administrations have pushed the court into a more conservative stance. Other calls for retirement have come partly for his failure to reverse the decision and also for his tenure leading the court. This comes as some Court observers have suggested that justices on the Supreme Court should be limited to a twenty-year tenure, and as Roberts nears that, there have been calls for him to retire on that basis alone.