Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
Today’s Justice of the Day is: JOHN G. ROBERTS, JR. Chief Justice Roberts was born on this day, January 27, in 1955.
Chief Justice Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York. He excelled as a high school student, earning him a place at Harvard College, which he graduated from with the highest honors and an A.B. in History in 1976; he later attended Harvard Law School, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review and earned a J.D. in 1979.
Chief Justice Roberts began his career as a Clerk to two well-known members of the federal judiciary, first Judge Henry Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1979 to 1980, and then Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist (who would go on to be Chief Justice of the United States immediately before him) from 1980 to 1981. He then was a special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States from 1981 to 1982, the year he began a four year stint as Associate Counsel to President Ronald Reagan. Chief Justice Roberts entered private practice in Washington, D.C. in 1986, but temporarily left his work as a private attorney in 1989 upon becoming Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States Department of Justice in 1989. He went on to work there until the end of the first Bush administration, after which he returned to private practice in Washington. After a series of unsuccessful nominations, he was finally appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President George W. Bush in 2003, where he would remain until this elevation to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Chief Justice Roberts was originally nominated to succeed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor by President Bush, but his name was resubmitted to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist (who had recently passed away) on September 6, 2005. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 29, and received his commission that day. Chief Justice Roberts was appointed from the state of Maryland, and took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on the day he was confirmed. He is the current actively serving Chief Justice.
Chief Justice Roberts is perhaps the most important and high profile figures in the judiciary today, not only because he is the SCUS’s highest ranking member, but also thanks to his relatively moderate judicial ideology (he is generally considered to be the least conservative Republican appointee, other than Justice Anthony M. Kennedy), which often positions him as a decisive vote on important cases. The most notable example of this might be The Affordable Care Act Cases (2012), where he delivered an opinion of the Court (joined principally by the SCUS’s four Democratic-appointed Members) which in effect saved the Affordable Care Act from being struck down by the Court’s four other Republican-appointed Justices. This is not to imply that Chief Justice Roberts can honestly be considered any kind of moderate; as his votes and opinions in other cases, such as Citizens United v. FEC (2010) and Shelby County v. Holder (2013), make clear, he is not at all allergic to the idea of radically altering SCUS doctrine in many incredibly important and highly contested legal controversies.