Legal Masterminds: Current U.S. Supreme Court Justices

This post is the sixth in a series of posts about the current U.S. Supreme Court.

John Roberts was appointed to the Court in 2005 by president George W. Bush, following the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Ironically, Roberts had served as Rehnquist’s law clerk, after his clerkship for a Second Circuit Appellate judge.

John Glover Roberts Jr. (born January 27, 1955)

Roberts was born in New York, an later moved to Indiana as a child. He attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and graduated from both with high academic honors.

He worked in the Solicitor General’s Office, as a Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, and was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1992. However, a confirmation hearing was never heard after George H.W. Bush lost the election, and thus his nomination expired. He then returned to private practice, becoming the head of his firm’s appellate practice, and an adjunct faculty member of Georgetown Law. During his time in private practice, he argued some 39 cases before the Supreme Court, prevailing in 25 of them.

President George W. Bush initially nominated Roberts to take the seat left vacant by Sandra Day O’Connor, but following the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist, Bush re-nominated him to the Chief Justice position.

Roberts, a Thoughtful Conservative

Regarding his “philosophy” on Constitutional interpretation, Roberts stated in his confirmation hearings that he, “[did] not think beginning with an all-encompassing approach to constitutional interpretation is the best way to faithfully construe the document.”

A member of the Federalist Society at one point, he affirms the belief that states should act upon their different, local, circumstances, and pass laws to fit their needs.

Regarding the decision reached in Brown v. Board of Education, he stated, “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.”