John Roberts
John Roberts
John Glover Roberts Jr.is the 17th and current Chief Justice of the United States. He took his seat on September 29, 2005, having been nominated by President George W. Bush after the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He has been described as having a conservative judicial philosophy in his jurisprudence...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJudge
Date of Birth27 January 1955
CountryUnited States of America
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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 ballgame to see the umpire.
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Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath.
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I will be vigilant to protect the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court, and I will work to ensure that it upholds the rule of law and safeguards those liberties that make this land one of endless possibilities for all Americans.
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A chief justice's authority is really quite limited, and the dynamic among all the justices is going to affect whether he can accomplish much or not. There is this convention of referring to the Taney Court, the Marshall Court, the Fuller Court, but a chief justice has the same vote that everyone else has.
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President Ronald Reagan used to speak of the Soviet constitution, and he noted that it purported to grant wonderful rights of all sorts to people. But those rights were empty promises, because that system did not have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law and enforce those rights.
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While some of the tales of woe emanating from the court are enough to bring tears to the eyes, it is true that only Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off.
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It's sobering to think of the seventeen chief justices; certainly a solid majority of them have to be characterized as failures. The successful ones are hard to number.
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There is no better gift a society can give children than the opportunity to grow up safe and free - the chance to pursue whatever dreams they may have.
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When we go to a restaurant, they don't ask, 'Do you want the asbestos section or the non-asbestos section?' They do ask, 'Do you want smoking or nonsmoking?'
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Anytime you get nine people together, whether it's at a party or it's in the conference room of the Supreme Court, you do have to maintain some order, or it does kind of degenerate into squabbling pretty quickly.
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When I worked in the Department of Justice, in the office of the solicitor general, it was my job to argue cases for the United States before the Supreme court. I always found it very moving to stand before the justices and say, 'I speak for my country.'
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Legislative novelty is not necessarily fatal; there is a first time for everything.
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I don't type on the computer or edit. Law students who went to law school really just a couple years after I did were brought up all on the computers and that's how they do it, but I was still part of the older school.
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A justice is not like a law professor, who might say, 'This is my theory... and this is what I'm going to be faithful to and consistent with,' and in twenty years will look back and say, 'I had a consistent theory of the First Amendment as applied to a particular area.'